天府自然历丨生态系统重要“控制器”

童话故事里“狼外婆”和“大灰狼”都是吃人的，但实际上，狼经受着人类长期的“挤压”，栖息地和种群数量锐减。狼，比我们想象中脆弱得多。

"Grandma Wolf" and "Big Bad Wolf" both eat humans in fairy tales, but in reality, wolves have been suppressed by human beings for a long time, and their habitats and populations are decreasing rapidly. Wolves are much more vulnerable than we think.

我国曾是狼种群数量最大的国家之一。以四川为例，上世纪50年代前，四川西部山区、盆地周边，都有狼的踪迹，种群数量也比较大。后来，随着经济发展，人类家畜家禽的养殖规模和范围扩大，狼常常进入农家猎捕牲畜，被视作恶兽，遭到了大范围的捕杀，栖息地也不断萎缩。到上世纪80年代，狼的活动范围已经被“驱赶”至川西地区，种群数量也锐减。

China used to have one of the largest Wolf populations in the world. Taking Sichuan as an example, before the 1950s, there were traces of wolves in the mountainous areas of western Sichuan and around the basin, and the population was relatively large. Later, with economic growth and the expansion of poultry breeding, wolves often entered farmhouses to hunt livestock and were regarded as vicious animals and were hunted massively, and their habitat kept shrinking. By the 1980s, they had been driven to only the western part of Sichuan, and the population had also declined sharply.

狼处于食物链顶端，在自然界中，它们的食物以有蹄类动物为主，比如野猪、鹿等等，对狼赶尽杀绝，最终会破坏生态平衡。可以说，狼是生态系统里很重要的一个开关，相当于自上而下的一个“控制器”。

Wolves are at the top of the food chain, and in nature, their food is mainly hoofed animals, such as wild boars and deer, etc. Killing all wolves will eventually destroy the ecological balance. Wolves are an important switch in the ecosystem, equivalent to a "controller" from top down.