Restoring the populations of a few important groups of animals could help capture huge amounts of carbon from the air and thereby play a role in limiting global warming.

恢复一些重要动物种群的数量，可以帮助从空气中捕获大量的碳，从而在限制全球变暖方面发挥作用。

Climate change research has emphasised the importance of vast forests and seagrass meadows as the most efficient way of storing carbon. But bison, elephants, whales, sharks and other massive wild animals also store carbon in their bodies while promoting tree and seagrass growth, preventing carbon-releasing wildfires and packing down ice and soil to keep carbon in the ground, says Oswald Schmitz at Yale University.

气候变化研究一直强调广大森林和海草草甸是储存碳的最有效的碳储存方式。但是，耶鲁大学的奥斯瓦尔德·施密茨说，野牛、大象、鲸鱼、鲨鱼和其他大型野生动物也在体内储存碳，同时能促进树木和海草的生长，防止释放碳的野火，并将冰和土壤压实以将碳保持在地下。

“There’s been scepticism in the scientific community that animals matter, because if you just do the accounting, they’d say animals don’t make up much of the carbon on the planet, so they can’t be important,” he says. “What we’re doing is connecting the dots, showing that animals – despite their lack of abundance – have an outsized role, because of the multiplier effects that they create.”

他说：“科学界一直对动物的重要性持怀疑态度，因为如果只是简单计算，可以说动物不会构成地球上的碳，所以它们不可能很重要。”“我们正在做的是把这些点联系起来，表明动物——尽管缺乏丰富性——但由于它们创造的乘数效应而发挥了巨大的作用。”

To keep the average global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level, scientists estimate that we need to remove 6.5 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere until 2100. Current models that focus on protecting and restoring forest, wetland, coastal and grassland ecosystems would fall short by an estimated 0.5 to 1.5 gigatonnes per year, says Schmitz.

为了使全球平均气温不超过工业化前水平1.5°C，科学家估计，到2100年，我们每年需要从大气中清除65亿吨二氧化碳。施米茨说，目前专注于保护和恢复森林、湿地、沿海和草原生态系统的模式，每年仅能减少约0.5至1.5亿吨二氧化碳。

He and his colleagues reviewed data from previous publications about the environmental effects – including dispersing seeds, trampling, carbon cycling, feeding behaviour, hunting behaviour and methane production – of dozens of kinds of wild animals.

他和他的同事们回顾了以前发表的关于环境影响的数据，梳理了几十种野生动物在散布种子，践踏，碳循环，进食行为，狩猎行为和甲烷产生方面的研究。

They determined that we could theoretically meet the planet’s carbon reduction goals by protecting six groups of animals and expanding another three. The populations of reef sharks, grey wolves, wildebeest, sea otters, musk oxen and ocean fish need to be maintained at current levels. We would also need populations of at least 500,000 African forest elephants, 2 million American bison and 188,000 baleen whales in the Southern Ocean. Collectively, these populations could help capture approximately 6.41 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide annually, says Schmitz.

他们认为，理论上，我们可以通过保护六种动物和扩大另外三种动物来实现地球的碳减排目标。礁鲨、灰狼、角马、海獭、麝牛和海洋鱼类的数量需要保持在目前的水平。我们还需要至少50万头非洲森林象、200万头美洲野牛和18.8万头南大洋须鲸。施米茨说，这些种群每年可以帮助捕获大约6.41亿吨二氧化碳。