中英文本

Gerrity estimates the total cost to buy 500,000 acres of private land and endow it forever will be upwards of $500 million -- half the price of a professional football stadium, which has a rough shelf life of 20 to 30 years. From 2009 to 2017 alone, more than a million acres of native prairie were converted to cropland in the seven counties surrounding APR.
格里蒂估计，要购买并永久占有50万英亩的私人领地，总共要花费5亿美金--一座专业足球场价格的一半，而且足球场的使用年限大约是20到30年。仅在2009年到2017年间，美国草原保护区周围7个县超过一百万英亩的草场就变成了耕地。
"Species are blinking out," he says. "Habitat is going away. There's a really short period, maybe 20 to 30 years, to do some really big stuff, and then the opportunity is going to be gone. We're swinging for the fences here."
他说：“物种正在消失。栖息地也正在消失。可以做一些大事的时间很短，可能只有二十到三十年，然后机会就消失了。我们正在因为这些栅栏付出代价。”

It's an audacious vision. It is also a very contentious one.
这是一个大胆的预测。它也同样充满争议。
When it rains in central Montana, the dirt roads turn into what the locals call "gumbo," a slick clay-mud that often is impassable. It is, mercifully, drying out as Leah LaTray steers her pickup down a track snaked with deep ruts, clods of mud winging out from the wheels. LaTray's great-grandfather, Mose LaTreille, was a cowboy of French and Native American heritage who came with the cattle to northern Montana in the 1870s. LaTray, 47, wears a long black braid over her shoulder, silver hoop earrings, vest and kerchief, and square-toed cowboy boots. Her parents lost their ranch when she was a girl; she left Montana in the 1990s to study microbiology in Seattle and then to train horses in Texas. "It took me 20 years to come back," she says, "but I did," buying 250 acres that remained in her family's hands. LaTray makes her living running cattle on her partner's property now. "If you sell your land, you sell your future," she says.
蒙大拿州中部下雨的时候，布满尘土的路面就会变成当地人口中的gumbo，意思是湿滑的无法通过的路。好在莉亚·拉特雷把皮卡开上布满车辙的小路时，路面已经干了，土块从轮子里滚出来。拉特里的曾祖父摩西·拉特雷是法国和美国土著的混血，也是一个牛仔。19世纪70年代，他骑着牛来到蒙大拿州的北部。拉特雷现在47岁，肩上垂着一条又黑又长的辫子，戴着银色的圆圈耳环，穿着背心，拿着手帕，脚上是方头牛仔靴。当她还是个小姑娘的时候，她的父母失去了牧场；20世纪90年代，她离开了蒙大拿州，到西雅图去学习微生物学，然后到了德克萨斯州驯马。她说：“我花了二十年才回来。但我做到了。”拉特雷父母的250英亩的地被人买走，她靠在伙伴的草场上牧牛维生。“如果你卖掉自己的土地，你就卖掉了自己的未来。”她说。

重点讲解

1.upwards of 超过；...以上
Upwards of 70 percent of U.S. couples are cohabiting these days before marrying, the researchers estimate.
研究者预计，目前超过70%的美国夫妇婚前同居

2.shelf life 使用期限；保质期
For taste, pick something with a long shelf life like chocolate.
味觉上，挑一些保存期限长一些的食品，如巧克力。

3.blink out 消失
They shared their breakfast here, watching the stars blink out as the sun spread its amber mantle over the meadows and hills.
他们在这里分享了早餐，看着星星一闪一闪的消失在天幕下，太阳将琥珀色的斗篷披在牧场和山丘上。