犯罪現(xiàn)場：美國的動物法醫(yī)實驗室

犯罪現(xiàn)場：美國的動物法醫(yī)實驗室

At about 12:45 A.M. on April 10, 2013, a man named Song Shen Zhen entered the United States from Mexico at the border crossing in downtown Calexico, Calif. Zhen, a 73-year-old resident of Calexico, told inspectors that he had nothing to declare, but when a customs officer looked in Zhen’s car, he noticed an unusual bulge on the vehicle’s rear floor. The officer removed the floor mats and discovered two plastic grocery bags stuffed with more than two dozen pieces of what appeared to be dehydrated fish. Zhen was permitted to leave the port of entry, but Homeland Security agents kept him under surveillance, tailing him to his house, which they eventually obtained a warrant to search. Inside, on floors covered with cardboard, they found hundreds of pieces of fish like the ones Zhen had carried across the border, lined up in neat rows to dry, with electric fans arranged to blow air across them. According to the criminal complaint filed against Zhen in United States District Court, Southern District of California, the residence “appeared to be set up as a . . . factory,” a smuggling drop-house dedicated to the drying and packaging of valuable contraband: the swim bladders of a fish called the totoaba.

2013年4月10日，大約凌晨12:45，一個名叫鄭松深(音譯)的人穿過加州卡萊克西科市中心的邊境，從墨西哥進入美國。鄭73歲，是卡萊克西科的居民，他告訴檢查員自己沒有需要申報的物品，但一個海關(guān)官員向他的車中看去，注意到后座地板上有一個異常的突起。這位官員拿掉后座地毯，發(fā)現(xiàn)了兩個塑料食品袋，里面塞滿脫水魚干之類的東西，大約有20多個。鄭被允許離開口岸，但國土安全部的特工對他進行了密切監(jiān)視，尾隨他到家，最后終于得到搜查許可證。他家地上堆滿紙板箱，特工們找到了幾百條類似鄭攜過邊境的魚，排列得整整齊齊，等待脫水，還有電扇用來通風。根據(jù)美國聯(lián)邦地區(qū)法院對鄭提起的刑事起訴書，他“顯然是以開辦工廠為業(yè)”，它是一個走私據(jù)點，專門用來風干和包裝一種貴重的走私物品：石首魚的魚鰾。

The totoaba macdonaldi is a marine fish found only in the Gulf of California in Mexico. It can grow to lengths of more than six feet and weigh as much as 220 pounds. It’s the largest species within the family Sciaenidae, commonly called “drums” or “croakers” because of the vibrations produced by muscles surrounding their swim bladders, gas-filled sacs that regulate the fishes’ buoyancy.

加利福尼亞灣石首魚(totoaba macdonaldi)是一種海魚，只出產(chǎn)于墨西哥的加利福尼亞灣。它可以生長到六英尺以上，220磅重。是石首魚科中最大的一種，因為它的魚鰾(魚類的體內(nèi)用來調(diào)節(jié)它們在水中升降的氣囊)周圍的肌肉會震動，所以經(jīng)常被人叫做“鼓魚”或者“哇魚”。

Swim bladders are also a highly prized delicacy. In China, dried swim bladders are known as fish maw, the main ingredient in soups and stews reputed to aid fertility, improve circulation and eradicate skin conditions. Commercial totoaba fishing in the Gulf of California peaked in the mid-1940s, after the arrival of Chinese immigrant field laborers in the border city of Mexicali opened a boom market for fish maw. Often, fishermen would slice open the totoaba, remove the swim bladders, and leave the carcasses in heaping piles to rot on the seashore. Overfishing contributed to a dramatic decline in the totoaba population, and in 1976, the fish was added to the list of most protected species covered by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an agreement signed by 180 nations, including the United States and Mexico.

魚鰾也是一種非常珍稀的佳肴。在中國，干魚鰾是若干湯類和燉菜的主料，被認為能促進生殖能力，改善循環(huán)系統(tǒng)，消除皮膚問題。20世紀40年代，隨著中國移民工人從邊境城市莫西利卡到來，市場上對魚鰾的需要頓時激增，加利福尼亞灣的石首魚商業(yè)捕撈也到達了頂峰。通常漁民會切開石首魚，取下魚鰾，把尸體棄在海灘上等待腐爛。過度捕魚導(dǎo)致石首魚數(shù)量急劇下降，到1976年，這種魚被瀕危野生動植物種國際貿(mào)易公約(CITES)列為最受保護的物種之一，該公約有180個國家簽署，美國和墨西哥也在其列。

But a black market in totoaba swim bladders has flourished. Today, the trade is largely transnational: Poachers catch the fish in Mexico and smuggle the bladders into the United States, where they can be ferried on direct flights to the Far East. In China, a single totoaba swim bladder can fetch as much as $10,000. The 240 bladders seized from the Calexico house, if sold abroad, “could conservatively be worth $3.6 million,” according to agents. Zhen’s intention, they say, was to send the valuable haul into China and Hong Kong.

但石首魚魚鰾的黑市仍然繁榮昌盛。如今，這在很大程度上是一個跨國貿(mào)易：偷獵者在墨西哥捕魚，將其運到美國，之后通過直航運到遠東。在中國，一個石首魚鰾可以賣到一萬美元。在卡萊克西科繳獲的240個魚鰾如果賣到海外，“保守估計，價值360萬美元，”探員說。他們說，鄭的目的正是將這些珍貴的物品運往中國和香港。

Instead, the bladders were placed in ice-packed coolers and overnighted 900 miles north to the loading dock of a building just east of downtown Ashland, Ore. From the outside, the place doesn’t look like much. It’s a low-slung glass and concrete pile, set back from the road behind some drab landscaping. It could be mistaken for a small office park, or an administrative building at the neighboring Southern Oregon University. In fact, it’s home to one of the most unique law enforcement institutions in the United States, or anywhere else: the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Forensics Laboratory, the world’s only full-service science lab devoted to crimes against wildlife.

如今，這些魚鰾被放在冰柜里，連夜向北走了900英里，來到俄勒岡州阿什蘭市中心以東的一座建筑。從外面看上去，這個地方并不起眼，是一棟低矮的玻璃水泥建筑，位于道路旁邊若干土褐色的自然景觀之后。它離南俄勒岡大學不遠，可能會被誤認為一處小型辦公園區(qū)，或是一棟辦公樓。事實上，它是美國乃至全世界獨一無二的一處執(zhí)法機構(gòu)——美國魚類與野生動物法醫(yī)服務(wù)實驗室，這是世界上唯一一處專門全職處理野生動物相關(guān)犯罪行為的科學實驗室。

The lab has been described as “Scotland Yard for animals” and “ ‘CSI’ meets ‘Doctor Dolittle.’ ” A more accurate comparison might be to the midcentury Bell Labs or to the Sandia National Laboratories. It is a hotbed of research, discovery and innovation. It’s a center of cutting-edge science that does double duty as a makeshift natural history museum. It’s also a crime lab — the place to turn to when you’ve collared a perp whose victims are Mexican fish. “We’re proud of what we’ve got going here,” said Ken Goddard, the lab’s director. “It’s a pretty neat little operation.”

這個實驗室被稱為“動物蘇格蘭場”或“CSI外加怪醫(yī)杜立德(Doctor Dolittle)。”其實更準確的是應(yīng)當將它與上世紀中葉的貝爾實驗室或桑迪亞國家實驗室相提并論。它是研究、發(fā)現(xiàn)與創(chuàng)新的溫床。是前沿科學中心，也充當臨時的自然歷史博物館。它還是一個法醫(yī)實驗室——如果你逮捕了一個罪犯，他的犯罪對象是墨西哥的魚類，那么你就要向這里求助。“我們?yōu)檫@里做的事情感到驕傲，”實驗室主管肯·戈達德(Ken Goddard)說，“這是個很不錯的小機構(gòu)。”

The building sprawls out across 40,000 square feet of office space and laboratories, which are divided into five units: chemistry, criminalistics, genetics, morphology and pathology. The lab boasts 29 full-time em-ployees, 19 of them scientists, and lots of state-of-the-art machines. There are electron microscopes and mass spectrometers. There is a vacuum metal deposition chamber: a barrel-shaped contraption that reveals negative-image fingerprints. The criminalistics unit has a test-fire tank, an 8-foot-long container filled with water, into which bullets are fired and retrieved for ballistics research. Behind the tank are a series of three free-standing walls — made of Kevlar, brick and stainless steel — that are designed to stop an errant gunshot. “You’ve gotta be paranoid,” said Goddard. “Every crime lab I’ve been to, their ballistics test-fire room has at least one bullet hole in the wall.”

這棟建筑占地四萬平方英尺，包括辦公與實驗區(qū)域，實驗區(qū)分為五部分：化學、犯罪學、基因?qū)W、動植物形態(tài)學與病理學，擁有29名全職雇員，其中19位是科學家，這里還擁有很多代表目前最先進水平的儀器，包括電子顯微鏡和大型分光儀。這里有一個真空金屬鍍膜室：一個圓筒形的裝置上顯示出指紋的負像。犯罪學實驗區(qū)內(nèi)有一個試射槽，是一個八英尺長的容器，里面裝著水，研究者向里面射擊子彈，以便進行彈道學研究。在水槽后面有三堵獨立的墻，分別用凱夫拉纖維、磚和不銹鋼制成，用來阻止錯射的流彈。“你可能會有點妄想狂，”戈達德說，“我去過的所有法醫(yī)實驗室，他們的彈道測試屋的墻壁上都至少有一個彈孔。”

It was an afternoon in late May. Goddard led a visitor past a row of genetics labs where more than 60,000 DNA samples are stored. He stopped in a narrow corridor, opening the door to a walk-in freezer where containers sat on rows of storage shelving. The signs on the boxes said: “Caution: Venomous snakes!” “Herps ready for tanning,” “Small critters ready for bugs.” Across the hall from the freezer, in a sealed room visible through a picture window, insects could be seen swarming over heaps of flesh and bone contained in plexiglass chambers. It was the domain of the lab’s most prodigious workers: a colony of dermestids, flesh-eating beetles that are deployed to “skeletonize” bird and mammal carcasses, so the bones can be examined as evidence or added to the lab’s standards collection. “They’re Mother Nature’s cleanup crew,” Goddard said.

那是五月底的一個下午。戈達德帶著參觀者走過一排基因?qū)W實驗室，里面存儲著六萬多個DNA樣本。他站在一個狹窄的過道前面，打開一個冷凍間的門，里面成排的貨架上放著冰柜。冰柜上的標簽寫著“當心：毒蛇!”“待制革的爬蟲”、“等著被蟲吃的小動物”。走過冷凍間大廳，可以通過落地玻璃窗看到一個被密封的屋子內(nèi)部，里面用樹脂玻璃柜盛放著尸體，成群結(jié)隊的昆蟲在上面爬。這里屬于實驗室最奇異的員工：一群皮蠹蟲，它們是專吃尸體的甲蟲，用來給鳥類和哺乳類動物的尸體“做骨骼標本”，這樣骨骼就可以用來當做證據(jù)，或者成為實驗室的收藏品。“它們是大自然母親的清潔工，”戈達德說。

Goddard, 68, began his career in Southern California, working as a crime-scene investigator. In the late 1970s, Fish and Wildlife Service agents realized they needed a laboratory to analyze their evidence. (“F.B.I. wouldn’t do it,” Goddard recalled. “They said, ‘Be serious. We’re gonna work a deer case?’ ”) Goddard was hired to get the operation off the ground. After years of bureaucratic haggling, the lab opened in July 1989.

戈達德今年68歲，他的事業(yè)生涯從南加州開始，最早是擔任犯罪現(xiàn)場調(diào)查員。70年代末，魚類和野生動物服務(wù)組織的工作人員發(fā)現(xiàn)他們需要一個實驗室來分析證據(jù)(“聯(lián)邦調(diào)查局不愿管，”戈達德回憶。“他們說，‘嚴肅點，讓我們辦野鹿的案子?’”)戈達德被雇來，從零開始地開展這項工作。經(jīng)過多年官僚主義的來回扯皮，實驗室于1989年7月開張了。

Ashland is an unlikely spot for a federal crime lab. It’s a small city tucked in amid the rolling foothills and orchards of southern Oregon wine country, about 15 miles north of the California border. Ashland is known for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and for the whiff of patchouli that hangs over its picturesque streets. On the main drag, there are vegan-friendly eateries and stores like Soundpeace, which sells crystals, tarot cards and other “spirited gifts.” The town is home to some 20,000 residents and, it seems reasonable to surmise, exactly twice that many Birkenstock sandals. “Ashland’s very hippie, very liberal, so we’re a bit of an oddity,” says Ed Espinoza, a chemist and the F.W.S. Forensics Lab’s deputy director. “We’re law enforcement, straight down the line. But we’re law enforcement for a good cause, as the community here would see it. The bad guys that we’re chasing are damaging the environment.”

阿什蘭并不像是個開設(shè)聯(lián)邦犯罪實驗室的好地方。它是個小城市，隱藏在綿延的山麓以及南俄勒岡造酒之鄉(xiāng)的果園中，位于加利福尼亞邊界以北15英里。阿什蘭以俄勒岡莎士比亞節(jié)而聞名，還有風景如畫的街頭飄蕩的廣藿香氣。主要干道有素食餐館和“Soundpeace”這樣的商店，販賣水晶、塔羅牌和其他 “靈性物品”。這里住著兩萬居民，似乎有理由推測他們都穿勃肯鞋。“阿什蘭很嬉皮，很自由，所以我們都有點像怪人，”化學家兼魚類與野生動物法醫(yī)服務(wù)實驗室的副主任艾德·依斯賓諾扎(Ed Espinoza)說。“我們完全是執(zhí)法機構(gòu)，但我們也是從事正義事業(yè)的執(zhí)法機構(gòu)，社區(qū)能夠看到這一點。我們抓的壞人在破壞環(huán)境。”

Wildlife crime has grown to a $19 billion dollar annual global trade, according to a report released last year by the International Fund for Animal Welfare, a conservation nonprofit. The black market in wildlife parts and products is the fourth-largest illegal industry worldwide, behind narcotics, counterfeiting and human trafficking, and it may well outstrip other illicit enterprises in terms of the variety of crimes and the complexities they pose for law enforcement. The wildlife trade encompasses culinary delicacies and Asian medicines, pets and hunting trophies, clothing and jewelry. It takes in commodities such as elephant ivory, rhinoceros horn, bushmeat, the shells of giant tortoises, the pelts of big-game cats. The environmental and social costs of the trade are grave. Wildlife crime is contributing to the erosion of natural resources and the spread of infectious diseases; it is providing robust new revenue streams for criminal syndicates and even terrorists. In a July 2013 executive order enhancing United States government coordination to combat wildlife crime, President Obama deemed the surge in poaching and trafficking an “international crisis” that is “fueling instability and undermining security.”

根據(jù)環(huán)保非營利組織國際動物福利基金會去年的報道，涉及野生動植物犯罪的年度全球貿(mào)易額已經(jīng)增長到190億美元。野生動植物及制品的黑市貿(mào)易是全世界第四大非法工業(yè)，位居毒品、造假和販賣人口之后。對于執(zhí)法機構(gòu)來說，野生動植物犯罪形式的多樣化和復(fù)雜化甚至有可能超過其他不法行為。野生動植物貿(mào)易涉及美食、亞洲醫(yī)藥、寵物、狩獵、服飾和珠寶業(yè)，包括象牙、犀牛角、叢林肉、大型龜殼、大型貓科動物的皮毛等物品。這類貿(mào)易的環(huán)境與社會成本非常巨大。野生動植物犯罪損害自然資源，會導(dǎo)致傳染疾病的傳播;它還為大型犯罪團伙甚至恐怖主義者提供穩(wěn)定的收入來源。2013年7月，在一則旨在提高美國政府應(yīng)對野生動植物犯罪中的協(xié)調(diào)能力的行政命令中，奧巴馬總統(tǒng)指出，野生動植物偷獵與販運的增長是“國際危機”，“導(dǎo)致不穩(wěn)定，破壞安全。”

The Ashland lab occupies a front line in this global struggle. Over the years, its researchers have done groundbreaking work, advancing science while arming law enforcement with crucial crime-fighting tools. Scientists at the lab discovered ways of extracting DNA from the leather in a handbag; they’ve successfully lifted fingerprints from objects that have been submerged in saltwater. In the 1990s, the lab pioneered a method of obtaining genetic information from a single fish egg, an innovation that helped foil caviar smugglers. It developed new techniques in ivory morphology to combat traffickers of elephant tusks. The impact of this work has reverberated far from Ashland. Bureaucratically, the lab is an oddity. It is a United States federal government institution; it’s also the official crime lab for the 180 nations that are parties to the CITES agreement. Effectively, it is the world’s wildlife forensics lab.

阿什蘭的實驗室便位于這場全球斗爭的前沿。多年來，這里的研究者們從事開創(chuàng)性的工作，推進科技發(fā)展，令執(zhí)法機構(gòu)有了與犯罪斗爭的關(guān)鍵武器。這里的科學家們發(fā)現(xiàn)了從手袋的皮料中提取DNA的方法;還成功地從被浸泡在鹽水中的物品上提取指紋。90年代，實驗室開創(chuàng)了一種從一粒魚籽中提取基因信息的方法，這是用來打擊魚子醬走私者的。它還發(fā)明了全新的象牙形態(tài)學技術(shù)，以此打擊象牙販運者。這項工作的成果在阿什蘭以外的地方獲得了強烈反響。在官僚體系中，這家實驗室是個異數(shù)。它是一家美國聯(lián)邦政府機構(gòu)，也是180個簽署了CITES協(xié)議的國家的官方犯罪實驗室。事實上，它是一家世界性的野生動植物法醫(yī)學實驗室。

The scope of the lab’s reach is on view in the place where the casework begins: the evidence control area. Each day, the mail is unpacked by the lab’s evidence handlers, and they have seen just about everything: poisoned bald eagles; a panther riddled with bullet wounds; 78 elephant tusks, poached in Africa and seized in Singapore; a rotting python corpse, coiled like a firehose and folded into a cooler. Two shipments in the spring of 2010 brought more than 200 pelicans: victims of the BP oil spill. The lab treated all the pelicans as separate homicide cases, extracting fluid from each bird’s lungs, which was matched by United States Coast Guard investigators to the oil that gushed from a well drilled by BP’s ill-fated Deepwater Horizon rig.

實驗室的業(yè)務(wù)范圍是在案件起始的地方——證據(jù)控制領(lǐng)域。每一天，實驗室的證據(jù)處理者都會拆開郵包，他們什么都見識過：被毒死的禿鷲、滿身彈孔的豹子、在非洲被偷獵并于新加坡被繳獲的78根象牙、腐爛的蟒蛇尸體像水龍一樣盤卷著，被塞在冷藏箱里。2010年春天，有人用兩個海運箱子送來了200多只鵜鶘尸體，它們死于英國石油公司漏油事件。實驗室把每只鵜鶘都列為一項單獨的殺害案，從每只鳥兒的肺中提取液體，配合美國海岸警衛(wèi)隊對于英國石油公司倒霉的深海垂直鉆井漏油事故調(diào)查。

On a recent morning, a cooler arrived bearing the frozen remains of a Mexican gray wolf. The badly decomposed carcass was thawed out and then placed on the slab in the pathology unit, where a necropsy was conducted by Rebecca Kagan, a veterinary pathologist. “It’s been maggot-scavenged, there’s not much left in there,” Kagan said. “But here’s a hole, a bloody hole. And here’s another nice little wound path going all the way through.” X-rays showed trace metal in the wolf’s chest — bullet fragments, in all likelihood — which Kagan dug out to pass along to the criminalistics unit for analysis.

最近的一個早晨，實驗室收到一個冷藏箱，里面裝著一具冷凍的墨西哥灰狼尸體。他們將這具嚴重腐爛的尸體化凍，然后放在病理學實驗室的擱板上，資深病理學家麗貝卡·卡根(Rebecca Kagan)主持了驗尸。“它被蛆蟲侵蝕過，已經(jīng)不剩什么東西了，”卡根說。“但是這里有一個洞，一個血洞。這兒還有一個小傷痕，是完全一致的。”X光檢查出這頭狼胸口中的金屬痕跡——十有八九是彈片——卡根把它取出來，送到犯罪學實驗室進行解析。

The wolf case was straightforward. But wildlife crime brings novel challenges to the work of forensics. The task of forensic scientists is to examine evidence in an effort to connect victim, crime scene and suspect. A traditional forensic investigation begins with a classic question: Whodunit? At the Ashland lab, the mystery is often more fundamental: What is it? Evidence in wildlife cases frequently appears in states of decay or in unidentified parts. The first step is to make the ID: to determine what exactly the evidence is and if it belongs to a species that is protected by law.

這頭狼的案子很簡單。但野生動植物犯罪對法醫(yī)學提出了新奇的挑戰(zhàn)。法醫(yī)學科學家的任務(wù)是檢視證據(jù)，把受害者、犯罪現(xiàn)場和疑犯聯(lián)系起來。傳統(tǒng)法醫(yī)學調(diào)查以一個經(jīng)典問題開始：誰干的?而在阿什蘭的實驗室，謎團要更加基本：這是什么?野生動植物案件中的證據(jù)經(jīng)常處于腐爛或難以辨認的狀態(tài)。第一步就是要弄清對象的身份：搞清楚這證據(jù)到底是什么東西，它是否屬于受法律保護的物種。

The swim bladders seized in the Calexico raid are a case in point. To a specialist’s trained eye, a totoaba bladder is easy to spot: It has distinctive curled tubules running along its base. But smugglers have learned to disguise the evidence, trimming away the tubules to pass off totoaba bladders as those of a non-CITES-protected fish. At the Ashland lab, researchers have developed a mitochondrial genetic sequence for the totoaba — a DNA pattern that distinguishes the fish from the next closest species. When the bladders in the Zhen case arrived in Ashland, scientists snipped off small pieces of tissue and “busted open” their cells to extract the mitochondrial DNA. The tests confirmed that the swim bladders were indeed from totoaba: smoking gun evidence for the prosecution of Song Shen Zhen.

在卡萊克西科繳獲的魚鰾就是一例。在專家受過訓(xùn)練的眼中看來，石首魚的魚鰾很容易辨認：它的底部有一種特殊的彎曲小管。但走私者也學會了隱藏證據(jù)，他們切除這些小管，把石首魚的魚鰾偽裝成不受CITES公約保護的魚類的魚鰾。在阿什蘭實驗室，研究者們研究出了石首魚的線粒體基因序列，這是一種DNA 模式，能把這種魚同相近的種類區(qū)分開來。這起案件的魚鰾來到阿什蘭后，科學家們從魚鰾組織上剪下小片，“打開”它們的細胞，提取線粒體DNA。測試證實這些魚鰾的確屬于石首魚：控告鄭松深的起訴書上有了鐵證。

Not all cases can be made with genetics, though. The CITES treaty accords endangered or threatened status to more than 35,000 animals and plant species, and the lab’s morphology unit has assembled a massive collection of standards, samples of protected species to use as points of comparison in casework. The goal is comprehensiveness: to build a storehouse, Goddard said drily, of “everything on the planet.”

不過不是所有案子都和基因有關(guān)。CITES公約包括超過3.5萬種瀕?；蚴芡{的動植物，實驗室的形態(tài)學部門收集有大量受保護物種的標本和樣本，用來在案件中進行對比。他們的目標非常宏大，戈達德一本正經(jīng)地說，是要建立一個倉庫，儲存“這個星球上的萬事萬物”。

The collection isn’t there yet. But the Ashland lab is something to behold: a gigantic curiosity cabinet that might have been art-directed by Wes Anderson. Shelves and glass cases hold an improbable array of bones, feathers, horns, hides. There are narwhal tusks and emu feet and monkey paws; there are drawers filled with severed heads of antelopes and the rainbow plumage of tropical birds. Everywhere, there’s taxidermy: stuffed birds and reptiles and jungle cats, with faces frozen in fierce grimaces. On one cabinet, a lab worker has stuck a pink Post-it note with a message scrawled in black marker: “Lions only please. Tigers in cabinet below.”

他們的收藏還遠未達到目標。但阿什蘭實驗室的收藏也非?？捎^：他們有一個巨大的古董柜，有點像在韋斯·安德森指導(dǎo)下布置的。架子和玻璃容器里裝著驚人的一排排骨頭、羽毛、角和皮膚。其中有獨角鯨的角、鴯鹋的腳和猴子的爪子;抽屜里放滿了色調(diào)簡樸的羚羊頭，還有熱帶鳥類的七彩羽毛。到處都是動物標本：鳥兒、爬蟲和叢林貓科動物;面孔被定格為猙獰的表情。一個柜子上貼著粉色即時貼，上面用黑色記號筆寫著“只用來放獅子，老虎放在下面的柜子里。”

It’s an eye-popping spectacle. It’s also depressing, a reminder of the recklessness and ruthlessness with which humankind exercises dominion over nature. Displayed in various corners of the morphology unit are the lab’s “shop of horrors,” macabre trophies fashioned from animal parts. Goddard pointed out cowboy boots crowned with cobra heads, a ceramic mug that sits atop two goose feet, a cane toad that has been converted into a change purse, with a zipper running the length of its body. Sitting nearby was Pepper Trail, the lab’s senior ornithologist. “Birders keep ‘life lists’ of all the birds they’ve seen in their life,” Trail said. “I’m in the melancholy position of having a ‘death list’ of all the birds I’ve identified dead. It’s over 600 species.”

這真是令人大開眼界的奇觀。但也非常令人沮喪，令人想起人類對待大自然有多么輕率和粗暴。形態(tài)學的若干個展示角堪稱實驗室的“恐怖小店”，陳列著可怕的動物殘體。戈達德指點著用眼鏡蛇頭做裝飾的牛仔靴、用兩只鵝腳做底座的陶罐、一只蔗蟾蜍被做成了零錢包，整個身體上貫穿著一道拉鏈。實驗室的資深鳥類學家佩珀·特萊爾(Pepper Trail)坐在旁邊，他說：“鳥類學家們都有自己的‘生命名單’，記錄他們一生所見過的鳥兒。我卻不幸擁有一個‘死亡名單’，記錄我鑒別過的死去的鳥兒，已經(jīng)有600多種了。”

Once, wildlife crime was a marginal issue. As recently as a decade ago, the wildlife police blotter was dominated by crimes of opportunity and one-offs: by hunters who would gun down elks so they could hang antlers in the den. Today, wildlife trafficking is a sophisticated international enterprise, with low risks and high profits drawing in organized crime: Russian mobsters, Irish crime families, extremist organizations like Darfur’s janjaweed militias and Somalia’s Al Shabab, a terror group with ties to Al Qaeda.

野生動植物犯罪一度是一個邊緣話題。十年前，野生動植物相關(guān)的案件主要都是投機犯罪和一次性犯罪——獵人為了在家中炫耀鹿角，打死了麋鹿之類。如今，野生動植物販運是非常復(fù)雜的國際性事業(yè)，對于俄羅斯黑幫和愛爾蘭犯罪家族等犯罪團伙來說是低風險，高回報的勾當，還有達爾富爾的賈賈威德民兵組織和索馬里青年黨等極端組織也參與其中，后者是一個同基地組織有聯(lián)系的恐怖組織。

These developments are putting wildlife crime on the agendas of policymakers and adding urgency to the efforts of the Ashland scientists. Recently, Ed Espinoza has been spending a lot of time thinking about wood. The illicit timber trade — the logging and trafficking of precious hardwoods from forests in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America — is a multibillion dollar industry. The huge profits have attracted violent criminal gangs, who are destabilizing the already precarious rule of law in developing countries. For law enforcement, the timber trade poses a vexing problem. Smugglers typically ship timber after it’s been milled, a process that obliterates morphological markers. How can illegal logging be stymied if the authorities are unable to distinguish legitimate wood products from contraband?

這些發(fā)展令野生動物犯罪進入了政策制定者的議程，也為阿什蘭的科學家們的工作增加了迫切性。最近，艾德·依斯賓諾扎花了很多時間思考木材方面的問題。非法木材貿(mào)易——非洲、東南亞與拉丁美洲森林內(nèi)珍貴硬木的砍伐與販運——是一項涉及數(shù)十億美元的大產(chǎn)業(yè)。巨額利潤吸引著暴力犯罪團伙，他們正在打破發(fā)展中國家本來就岌岌可危的保護法律。對于執(zhí)法機構(gòu)來說，木材貿(mào)易是個令人惱火的問題。走私者通常販運經(jīng)碾碎的木材，抹去它們本來的形態(tài)學特征。 如果官方不能分辨合法木制品與走私品，又要怎樣阻止非法砍伐行為呢?