VOA标准英语2011--Big Cats at Home on the Range

（单词翻译）

Big Cats at Home on the Range

Five years ago, U.S. conservation biologist Josh Donlan got some people howling with a controversial article in the scientific journal Nature. Almost literally¹ howling, since the subject was his proposal to "re-wild" the Great Plains.
Re-wild, meaning to re-locate wild animals, including predators² such as lions and cheetahs⁴ - from Africa to vast, fenced "ecological⁵ history parks" on the American prairie.
The goal would be to save species that are endangered because of their ever-shrinking habitat in Africa and to re-invigorate the predator-prey pecking order on the plains. 
The Nature article noted⁶ that 13,000 years ago, at the end of the Pleistocene geological era, the North American prairie teemed⁸ with big vertebrates such as woolly mammoths, five species of horses and an early version of the cheetah³. They were all hunted to extinction⁹ when humans arrived.
Saber-tooth tigers and the like are gone for good. But those who favor the re-wilding idea say today's threatened elephants, camels, and big cats could avoid the same fate on the American plains. And what fabulous¹⁰ photographic safari¹¹ attractions they would make for tourists.
Critics had fun with all this. One writer envisioned elephants in the driveway throughout the Midwest. Someone else pictured camels frozen solid in prairie winter snowdrifts.
But other conservationists said re-wilding deserved a fair look. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, gave it a "hats off" salute¹² for being provocative¹³, though it added, "If you want to think big, why not think big in Africa?"
So it goes without saying that there are no elephants outside of circuses and zoos in Kansas or Oklahoma. But small steps have been made. Former television magnate Ted⁷ Turner is modestly re-wilding his New Mexico ranch¹⁴, where he has brought back a giant, nearly extinct, breed of tortoise.
Fine, say sheep and cattle ranchers. But inviting¹⁵ hungry lions to roam America's grasslands¹⁶ would be insane, they say - fence or no fence.