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Ten-month-old emerson fixed his big brown eyes on me and yawned.
10个月大的爱默生，睁着它棕色的大眼睛盯着我，打了个哈欠。
Still groggy from a nap, the koala rubbed his face, then stuck out an expectant paw.
考拉还没睡醒，揉了揉脸，然后伸出一只期待的小爪子。
The nurse escorting me through his enclosure smiled. “He’s looking for his milk,” she said.
护送我穿过他的围栏的护士笑了。她说：“他在找他的牛奶。”
Four months earlier, when Emerson was admitted to Northern Rivers Koala Hospital, in New South Wales, Australia, he was so small that volunteers had to feed him with a syringe, dribbling formula into his mouth, his furry body swaddled in a towel.
四个月前，当艾默生被送进澳大利亚新南威尔士州的北河考拉医院时，他还很小，志愿者们不得不用注射器给他喂食，将配方奶滴进他的嘴里，他毛茸茸的身体裹在一条毛巾里。
Now healthy and about five pounds, he was one of the most effortlessly anthropomorphized animals I had ever come across.
现在它很健康，大约有五磅重，是我见过的最容易被拟人化的动物之一。
With his big nose and round-bodied floofiness, his shuffling movements, his droopy eyelids and eagerness to cuddle, he seemed like nature’s ultimate cross between a teddy bear, a bumbling grandpa, and a sleepy toddler.
他的鼻子很大，身体圆滚滚的，走起路来摇摇晃晃，眼皮耷拉着，还很喜欢拥抱，他似乎是大自然的杰作，融合了泰迪熊、笨手笨脚的爷爷和昏昏欲睡的幼儿的特点。
“The first thing I tell my volunteers when they come here to start is: ‘You will not be cuddling these koalas,’?” Jen Ridolfi, the volunteer coordinator for Friends of the Koala, the nonprofit that runs Northern Rivers, told me.
“当志愿者们来到这里开始工作时，我告诉他们的第一件事就是：‘你们不能拥抱这些考拉’”负责运营北河考拉医院的非营利组织“考拉之友”的志愿者协调员珍·里多尔菲告诉我说。
But sometimes even the most stoic get attached. Many koalas spend months here; volunteers call them “dear,” “sweetie,” and “love.”
但有时，即使是最坚强的人也会产生感情。许多考拉在这里待了几个月；志愿者们称它们为“亲爱的”、“甜心”和“亲爱的”。
I watched one volunteer lean down to coo at a male named Gigachad.
我看到一名志愿者俯身对一只名叫Gigachad的雄性考拉轻声细语。
“I just want to kiss his nose,” she said, before quickly assuring me that she wouldn’t.
“我只是想亲亲他的鼻子，”她说，然后很快向我保证她不会这么做。
Even FOK’s veterinary staff will occasionally pat the backs of koalas during routine checkups or slip a hand into the paw of an animal under anesthesia.
甚至连FOK的兽医工作人员在进行常规检查时也会偶尔拍拍考拉的背部，或者在麻醉状态下将手伸进动物的爪子里。
Ridolfi is vigilant about volunteers for a reason.
里多尔菲对志愿者保持警惕是有原因的。
Of the roughly 350 koalas admitted annually to Northern Rivers, only about a third survive.
在每年被送往北河医院的大约350只考拉中，只有约三分之一存活下来。
Chief among the threats they face is chlamydia—yes, that chlamydia—a bacterial infection that in koalas, as in humans, spreads primarily via sex, and can cause blindness, infertility, and other severe, sometimes fatal complications.
它们面临的主要威胁是衣原体--是的，就是衣原体--一种细菌感染，考拉和人类一样，主要通过性传播，可导致失明、不育和其他严重的并发症，有时甚至是致命的并发症。
Car collisions and dog attacks are not far behind.
汽车碰撞和被狗袭击也紧随其后。
Koalas are also vulnerable to cancers, fungal infections, herpes, parasites, kidney problems, mange, and a retrovirus that might leave them immunocompromised.
考拉也容易患上癌症、真菌感染、疱疹、寄生虫、肾脏问题、疥癣和一种可能导致它们免疫功能低下的逆转录病毒。
These acute perils are compounded by more chronic ones: habitat destruction; genetic fragility; and climate change, which fuels heat waves, droughts, and wildfires that scorch the trees that koalas live in and eat from.
这些紧急的危险因更长期的危险而加剧：栖息地破坏；基因脆弱性；以及气候变化，助长了热浪、干旱和野火，烧焦了考拉生活和觅食的树木。
“The biology of the species has been hammered by humans,” Edward Narayan, a biologist at the University of Queensland, told me.
昆士兰大学的生物学家爱德华·纳拉扬告诉我说：“该物种的生物学特性已经遭到人类的重创。”
Some koala populations have, in recent decades, fallen by 80 percent.
一些考拉种群，在最近几十年里，减少了80%。
In 2022, Australia’s federal government declared the animals endangered in Queensland, New South Wales, and the Australian Capital Territory, essentially the eastern third of the country.
2022年，澳大利亚联邦政府宣布，在昆士兰州、新南威尔士州和澳大利亚首都领地，也就是该国东部三分之一的地区，考拉被列为濒危物种。
Koalas are far from Australia’s most endangered animal—they’re not even its most endangered marsupial.
考拉远非澳大利亚最濒危的动物——它们甚至不是澳大利亚最濒危的有袋动物。
(Pity the Gilbert’s potoroo, a rat-kangaroo the size of a guinea pig, and the very rare and very whiskered northern hairy-nosed wombat.)
（可怜的吉尔伯特袋鼠，一种豚鼠大小的袋鼠，还有非常罕见、非常多毛的北方毛鼻袋熊。）
But if there’s any creature that people are motivated to save, it’s the koala.
但是，如果说有什么动物是人们有动力去拯救的，那就是考拉。
Since 2019, the Australian government has dedicated the equivalent of about 50 million U.S. dollars to conserving the species, far more than it has allocated to animals in greater peril.
自2019年以来，澳大利亚政府已投入相当于约5000万美元的资金用于保护该物种，远远超过了分配给其他更濒危动物的资金。
Koalas are a national icon and, like many other charismatic megafauna, a boom for tourism.
考拉是澳大利亚的国家象征，并且和许多其他有魅力的巨型动物一样，是旅游业的一大推动力。
Plus people just seem to connect with them in a way they do with few other animals.
另外，人们似乎与它们有一种与其他动物没有的联系。
But the places where koalas prefer to live --- lush, coastal regions --- are also the places that human beings find most hospitable.
但是考拉喜欢生活的地方--- 郁郁葱葱的沿海地区---也是人类觉得最舒适的地方。
Which means that even an animal this beloved may test the limits of what people are willing to sacrifice to save another species.
这意味着，即使是这种受人喜爱的动物，也可能考验人们为拯救另一个物种而愿意做出牺牲的极限。
