Chu Wenwen tries her best to protect animals. PROVIDED TO TEENS
In their spare time, most young people like to enjoy themselves and play on their smartphones. But Li Ruxue is different. He often patrols a forest and isolates himself from the outside world.
大多数年轻人喜欢在业余时间娱乐休闲，刷刷智能手机。但李如雪不一样，他经常在森林里搜寻，“与世隔绝”。
“Though the lifestyle is a little bit tiring, it’s meaningful,” the 27-year-old conservationist told CNR News.
这位27岁的环保工作者在接受中央广播总台央广新闻采访时表示:“虽然从事野外调查工作有点累，但很有意义。”
In his college years, Li actively took part in field research with his teachers. After graduation, he joined a skywalker gibbon protection organization, where one of his major responsibilities was picking up gibbon feces.
李如雪在大学期间就积极跟老师去野外做科研，大学毕业后加入了一个保护天行长臂猿的民间组织，主要工作内容之一就是捡猿粪。
The skywalker gibbon is a top-level State-protected animal whose population is smaller than that of wild giant pandas. Through analyzing the DNA from their feces, researchers can measure the inbreeding among different groups and protect them better.
天行长臂猿是国家一级重点保护动物，数量比野生大熊猫还要少。通过分析猿粪中的DNA，研究人员可以弄清不同种群之间近亲繁殖的情况，从而更好地保护它们。
So over the past four and a half years, Li has followed gibbons and collected their feces for researchers. Li said the job relies heavily on luck and perseverance. “Our work and rest completely depend on gibbons,”Li told Xinhua.
因此，李如雪一“捡”就是四年半，整天追猿、为研究人员捡猿粪。李如雪说这是一项十分依赖运气和毅力的工作，他在接受新华社采访时说：“我们的作息完全跟着长臂猿在走。”
But he has never regretted his choice or felt alone, as he has found more young people engaged in nature conservation.
但李如雪从没后悔自己的选择，也没有感到寂寞，因为他发现身边从事自然保护的年轻人变得越来越多。
Like Li, Chu Wenwen, 27, has also worked to protect animals.
无独有偶，27岁的初雯雯也一直致力于动物保护工作。
As her father is engaged in wildlife research, Chu has long been surrounded by wild animals, for example beavers, snow leopards and golden eagles. It was easy for her to make a deep connection with these creatures. After graduating from Beijing Forestry University in 2017, she followed in her father’s footsteps.
由于父亲从事野生动物研究工作，初雯雯和河狸、雪豹、金雕等野生动物一起度过了很长时间。对初雯雯来说，很容易就与野生动物产生了深厚的联结。2017年从北京林业大学毕业后，初雯雯追随了父亲的脚步。
Listed as a first-class State-protected animal in China, the Mengxin beaver is found only along the Ulungur River in Xinjiang’s Altay prefecture. To protect them, Chu initiated the “beaver canteen” program in 2018, which eventually attracted over 1 million internet users to donate snack money. A huge “canteen” of about 400,000 salix shrubs was built with the snack money from mostly young internet users.
蒙新河狸是国家一级保护动物，仅分布于新疆阿勒泰地区的乌伦古河流域。为了保护河狸，初雯雯在2018年发起了公益项目“河狸食堂”，最终吸引一百多万名网友捐出零食钱，建起了一个超级食堂——四十多万棵灌木柳苗，而捐款大多数来自于年轻的网友。
“I am lucky to live in such a great era when young people can fulfill their aspirations while the country strongly supports nature conservation,” said Chu.
初雯雯说：“很幸运，能生活在这样一个青年人可以施展志向，国家大力支持自然保护的伟大时代。”
According to Fan Pengfei, a professor at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, Guangdong province, ecological protection as an industry can provide only a few jobs, most of which are in research institutes and nongovernmental organizations.
广东省广州市中山大学教授范朋飞表示，生态保护作为一个行业，能够提供的就业岗位并不多，大多集中在科研单位、非政府组织等。
But he has seen more and more young people take part-time jobs as journalists, photographers and so on to raise awareness of wildlife protection.
但他也看到更多年轻人以兼职的身份参与到更广义的生物多样性保护中来，比如媒体、摄影师等，提升了全社会对这项工作的认知。
“Young people are the future of the world and the future of global biodiversity conservation,” noted Xinhua.
新华社指出，总有人正年轻，他们是世界的未来，也是全球生物多样性保护的未来。
