In China, when Yao Ming speaks, people listen. Trading on this former basketball superstar’s towering stature in his home country, WildAid has named Mr. Yao a spokesman on behalf of Africa’s severely threatened elephant and rhino populations to help curb China’s multi-billion-dollar lust for illegal wildlife products.
在中国，姚明讲话的时候，人们都听。野生救援协会(WildAid)利用这位前篮球超级明星在自己祖国的崇高威望，任命他担任非洲濒危大象和犀牛的代言人，帮助遏制中国亿万富翁对非法野生动物制品的贪求。

“Saving Africa’s Giants With Yao Ming,” Tuesday on Animal Planet, follows Mr. Yao to the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya and the Kariega Game Reserve in South Africa to witness the brutality inflicted by poachers upon these creatures. Some of the images are heartbreakingly graphic. So are the statistics, about the six northern white rhinos left in the world (the seventh died last month), their horns believed by some cultures to contain medicinal properties, or the more than 20,000 African elephants killed in 2013 for ivory to be carved into trinkets. With a demand that exceeds the number of animals remaining, “it’s a race against time to get people to care sufficiently,” says Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder and chief executive of Save the Elephants. Or, as Mr. Yao says in a public-service spot, “When the buying stops, the killing can, too.”
周二，《动物星球》(Animal Planet)频道播放的《和姚明一起拯救非洲巨兽》(Saving Africa’s Giants With Yao Ming)跟随姚明到肯尼亚的桑布鲁国家自然保护区和南非的卡里埃加野生动物保护区，见证偷猎者对这些动物的暴行。有些画面生动得令人心碎。片中的数据也令人震惊，世界上只剩下六只北方白犀牛（第七只上个月死了），有些文化认为它们的角具有药用价值；2013年，两万多只非洲大象被杀害，它们的象牙被雕刻成小饰品。目前的需求量超过幸存动物的数量。拯救大象组织(Save the Elephants)的创始人、首席执行官伊恩·道格拉斯-汉密尔顿(Iain Douglas-Hamilton)说，“我们是在和时间竞赛，要让人们足够关爱。”或者，正如姚明在一个公益广告中说的，“没有买卖，就没有杀害。”