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Now essentially all of the 500 homes in the estate are occupied—some by buyers who were more attracted to the new houses and coastal location than to Koala Beach’s commitment to biodiversity.
现在，该庄园的500套房屋几乎全部被占用——其中一些买家更被新房子和沿海位置所吸引，而不是考拉海滩对生物多样性的承诺。
It’s become common, Timmins said, to see cars speeding down the streets, and about half the fences have been built or retrofitted to sit flush against the ground.
蒂明斯说，看到汽车在街上超速行驶已经很常见了，而且大约一半的围栏已经建造或改造为与地面齐平。
At least a few people have snuck pet dogs into the estate, Timmins said, one of which she thinks may be owned by some of her neighbors. They deny it, she said. “But I’ve got the picture.”
至少有几个人偷偷把宠物狗带进了庄园，蒂明斯说，她认为其中一只可能是她的一些邻居养的。他们否认了，她说。“但我有照片。”
Koala Beach never took off as a model for sustainable development; according to Tabart, it is still Australia’s only designated koala-friendly subdivision.
考拉海滩从未成为可持续发展的典范；据塔巴特说，它仍然是澳大利亚唯一指定的考拉友好型分区。
How much it has actually helped its namesake animal is also unclear.
它实际上对与其同名的动物有多大帮助也不清楚。
No one I spoke with was able to tell me, for instance, how many koalas live there—let alone whether their numbers have increased since the koala-friendly regulations went into effect. “I have lost faith in Koala Beach,” Tabart said.
例如，我采访过的人中没有一个能告诉我那里生活着多少只考拉——更不用说自从考拉友好型法规生效以来，它们的数量是否有所增加了。“我对考拉海滩已经失去了信心，”塔巴特说。
The development itself will probably still be around in another 30 years.
再过 30 年，开发项目本身可能还会存在。
“Whether the koalas are there,” she said, “I don’t think so.”
“那些考拉是否在那里，”她说，“我不这么认为。”
Government conservation plans have set aside swaths of protected koala habitat, but many of the experts I spoke with said that the land isn’t nearly enough.
政府的保护计划已经划出了大片受保护的考拉栖息地，但与我交谈过的许多专家表示，这片土地远远不够。
Koala Beach was meant to be the compromise—a tacit acknowledgment that humans wouldn’t cede all of the untouched forest necessary for koalas to live apart from us.
考拉海滩本应是一种妥协——一种默认，即人类不会放弃所有未受干扰的森林，这些森林是考拉与我们分开生活所必需的。
But humans made their priorities clear: People do love koalas. They also love cars and dogs.
但是人类明确了他们的优先事项：人们确实喜欢考拉。他们也喜欢汽车和狗。
In other parts of Australia, koalas face a threat that’s almost unimaginable in Koala Beach: overpopulation.
在澳大利亚的其他地区，考拉面临着一种在考拉海滩几乎无法想象的威胁：数量过剩。
French Island, about a 15-minute ferry ride from Stony Point, in the southern Australian state of Victoria, is home to about 140 humans and, by residents’ best estimates, at least 35 times as many koalas.
法国岛距离澳大利亚南部维多利亚州的斯托尼角约15分钟的渡轮航程，是大约140名人类的家园，据居民的最佳估计，这里至少有35倍于人类数量的考拉。
Veronica Shannon, who has lived on French for the past three years, sees dozens most weeks, several of them in the grove of trees a few hundred feet from her front door.
维罗妮卡·香农过去三年一直住在法国，她每周都会看到几十只，其中有几只就在离她家前门几百英尺的树林里。
In late February, she sent me a photo of a hulking male perched on her deck that a few days earlier had startled her awake when he rapped his claws on her bedroom window.
2月下旬，她给我发了一张照片，照片上是一只庞大的雄性动物栖息在她的甲板上。几天前，当它用爪子敲她卧室的窗户时，把她惊醒了。
French is one of the country’s most koala-rich tracts.
法国岛是该国考拉最数量最多的地区之一。
The animals were introduced to the island in the 1890s by locals, in an attempt to halt population declines during the still-rampant fur trade.
这些动物是在19世纪90年代由当地人引入该岛的，试图阻止在当时仍猖獗的毛皮贸易期间的种群数量下降。
Safe from foxes and other mainland predators, the island’s koalas became so numerous that conservationists eventually began using them to repopulate other areas in the country’s south.
由于没有狐狸和其他大陆捕食者的威胁，岛上的考拉数量变得如此之多，以至于自然资源保护主义者最终开始利用它们在该国南部的其他地区重新繁殖。
Down there, koalas haven’t had to contend with the same sweep of urbanization that has reshaped the continent’s east coast; they seem to be less troubled by both chlamydia and retrovirus.
在那里，考拉不必与重塑东海岸的城市化浪潮抗争；它们似乎也较少受到衣原体和逆转录病毒的困扰。
Overall, the region’s koala population is large and stable enough that, were koala declines to be averaged across the entire country, any official listings for endangerment would probably disappear.
总体而言，该地区的考拉数量庞大而又稳定，因此，如果全国考拉数量下降的平均值是全国考拉数量下降的平均值，那么任何官方列出的濒危名单可能都不作数。
Some locals on French, including Shannon, delight in the koalas that traipse across their property and slosh through the surf near the ferry dock.
一些法国岛上的人，包括香农，很高兴看到考拉在他们的地盘上闲逛，在渡轮码头附近的海浪中嬉戏。
Southern koalas look different from northern ones: They’re browner, fluffier, and weigh about twice as much.
南方考拉看起来和北方考拉不同：它们的颜色更偏棕色，毛发更蓬松，体重也大约是北方考拉的两倍。
And unlike the wary animals to the north, French’s koalas don’t seem to mind humans.
并且，不像北方那些机警的动物，法国岛的考拉似乎并不介意人类。
A co-owner of the island’s Eco Inn, Phil Bock, showed me an adult male koala that was dozing at eye level in a stumpy tree, barely fidgeting even when Bock cooed at him from inches away.
该岛生态旅馆的共同所有者菲尔·博克向我展示了一只成年雄性考拉，它在一棵矮树上打瞌睡，眼睛平视，即使博克在几英寸外对它咕咕叫，它也几乎不动。
Other residents, though, see the koalas as a nuisance.
其他居民则认为考拉是一种麻烦。
During the animals’ mating season, in the spring and summer, many evenings ring with males’ piglike grunts and growls, followed by females’ wailing shrieks.
在动物的交配季节，也就是春天和夏天，许多个夜晚都回荡着雄性猪一样的呼噜声和咆哮声，接着是雌性的哀号尖叫。
And it’s nearly impossible to sate the appetites of thousands of animals that can each grind through more than a pound of eucalyptus leaves a day.
而且，要满足数千只动物的胃口几乎是不可能的，它们每只每天都能吃掉超过一磅的桉树叶。
Noel Thompson, a local farmer whose family has been on French Island for 130 years, drove me to a small grove of trees he had planted on his ranch and counted off the half a dozen or so that, thanks to the “bears,” no longer had leaves, and never would again: “Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
诺埃尔·汤普森是当地的一位农民，他的家族在法国岛已经生活了130年。他开车带我去了他在自己农场种植的一小片树林，数了数大约有六棵树，由于“熊”的原因，这些树不再有叶子，也永远不会再有了：“死了，死了，死了，死了，死了，死了。”
” Thompson’s cousin Lois Airs told me she had dedicated years to planting and caring for French’s trees, many of which koalas then stripped bare.
汤普森的表妹洛伊斯·艾尔斯告诉我，她多年来一直致力于种植和照料弗伦奇的树木，其中许多树后来被考拉剥光了。
She likes koalas, she said, but French long ago surpassed its threshold for too many.
她喜欢考拉，她说，但法国岛现在已经泛滥了。
