经济学人15:鳄鱼救助者约翰·瑟布贾纳森

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

　　讣告;约翰·瑟布贾纳森;

　　John Thorbjarnarson,saviour of crocodilesdied， on February 14th, aged¹ 52;

　　鳄鱼救助者约翰·瑟布贾纳森于2月14日去世，英年52岁。

　　THE rippling² fire of the tiger, the cuddliness of the panda, the viridian flash of the green-cheeked parrot, all argue that these most-endangered species should be saved. It's harder to make the case for crocodilians. That bony, hideous³ head, with its unblinking yellow eye; those huge teeth, smelly with fish-debris⁴, overhanging the long, cruel, curling smile; the slithering slide of the white underside down a muddy slope, into the water where those jaws⁵, the strongest in Nature, will smash round the leg of a man and pull him under, thrashing and screaming.

　　所有人都坚决主张，拥有火焰般花纹的虎、让人禁不住想拥抱的熊猫、闪着翠绿光芒的绿颊鹦鹉这些最濒危的物种应得到保护。而保护鳄鱼更困难。鳄鱼——它骨骼突出、头部奇丑、头部有着不眨的黄眼晴，它牙齿巨大，且嵌有难闻的鱼碎片，显出长长的、无情的、撅唇的冷笑，它摇摆着白色的腹部向泥泞的斜坡下滑去，没入水中。在水里，自然界最强壮的生物鳄鱼的嘴会在人四肢反复挣脱和凄漓尖叫中，绞断人的腿并把人拖入水中。

　　John Thorbjarnarson knew he could not end men's fear of crocodilians, hard-wired since hominids first ventured down from the trees into swamps that seethed⁶ with them. But in his 20-odd years working for the Wildlife Conservation Society he did more than anyone else to try. He commended the grace of their straight, silent swimming, their camouflage⁷ mottlings of yellow, grey and olive green, and the jewelled beauty of new, damp hatchlings no bigger than the span of his hand. He stressed their cultural importance, even magic: the dragon of China, bringer of good fortune, and the water god of ancient Egypt who made the grasses green. He extolled⁸ their niceness, snapping them as they basked⁹ companionably on warm mud or on a favourite bank of long grass, the forefoot of one embracing the back of another. Most crocodilians, he reminded people, preferred to dine on fish or molluscs rather than farmers. Most were sensitive, even shy.

　　约翰?瑟布贾纳森知道，自人类首次冒险从树上直接落入鳄鱼渲腾的沼泽中以来，他不可能终结人们对鳄鱼的恐惧。但在他为野生动物保护协会工作的20多年岁月里，他比其他人更勤于冒险。他欣赏鳄鱼那笔直、无声的泳行雅姿，他欣赏鳄鱼那黄色、灰色和橄榄绿相间的伪装斑，他欣赏那如宝石美人般的、刚刚出生、浑身湿漉漉的、与他的手臂等长的幼鳄。他强调鳄鱼文化的重要性，甚至着迷于好运守护神中国龙，使草地变绿的古埃及水神。他称颂鳄鱼的漂亮，当鳄鱼们在暖和的烂泥中懒洋洋地晒太阳，或在舒适的长草坡上，一只鳄鱼的前足趴在另一只鳄鱼的背上时，他拍摄它们。他提醒人们，大多数鳄鱼宁愿吃鱼或软体动物而不愿吃农夫。大多数鳄鱼敏感、甚至胆小。

　　He also warned the world how scarce they were. Before he began to catalogue them as a postgraduate¹⁰, drawing up in 1988 an action plan to save them, all 23 species of crocodilians were threatened or declining. Their numbers had been destroyed by man's hatred¹¹ and the handbag trade. Only a few years ago, exploring the Brazilian Amazon, Mr Thorbjarnarson found black cayman (“a very pretty creature, actually”) hunted indiscriminately, like fish. Patrolling the mouth of the Yangzi in 1997, where swamps had been turned into urban sprawl¹² or rice fields, he counted only 120 Chinese alligators¹⁴ still in the wild. Here he began an intensive strategy of egg-collecting, captive rearing in the Bronx Zoo, and release. To his delight, the alligators from the Bronx remembered what to do.

　　他还向世人发出警告，鳄鱼是多么的稀少。1988年，即在他作为一名研究生起草一份拯救鳄鱼的行动计划而对鳄鱼进行登记分类之前，所有23种鳄鱼都受到威胁或濒危。鳄鱼的数量由于人们对它们的憎恶和鳄鱼皮包交易而减少。仅在几年前，在探险巴西亚马逊河的过程中，约翰?瑟布贾纳森先生发现了被像鱼类一样不分青红皂白地猎杀的美洲黑鳄（他说：“说老实话，它像一位非常漂亮的姑娘”）。在1997年巡查长江入海口（这里已变成杂乱无章的城市拓展区或稻田）的过程中，他估摸仍在野外的仅有120只扬子鳄。于是他在此开始了一项十分细致的扬子鳄蛋收集行动，然后在布朗克斯动物园人工饲养，再放归大自然。令他高兴的是，布朗克斯的扬子鳄还记得如何在野外生存。

　　Crocodilians, he explained, were much more like birds than snakes. They built nests he had to hunt for, poling his punt along sandbanks to find their holes or poking¹⁵ in the forest debris under the trees: a thin, laconic¹⁶, clear-eyed figure as quiet and unobtrusive as the creatures he was trailing. He watched them brood their young, listening for the cheeps that announced the eggs were hatching and carrying the young to water. The Nile crocodile rolled its eggs gently in its teeth to help them hatch. In the WCS labs at the Bronx Zoo he would pull the papery, blood-pink shell from a hatchling and announce: “It's his birthday!” with a father's pride.

　　他解释道，与蛇比起来，鳄鱼明显更像鸟。鳄鱼们构筑他必须得通过寻找才能见到的巢穴，他是通过顺着沙洲划平底船、或是拨弄林中植物沉积物去寻找。他这种安全性差、手段简单、但目的明确的寻找方式一似他正在跟踪的鳄鱼一样，不事声张、不引人注意。他通过注意倾听预示鳄蛋正在破壳和送雏鳄入水时的雏鳄吱叫声，观察鳄鱼孵育雏鳄的过程。尼罗河鳄是通过在其齿腔内轻轻滚动鳄蛋来帮助孵化。在布朗克斯野生动物保护协会的实验室里，他从一个人工孵化的雏鳄身上扯下如纸一样薄的血红色蛋壳，带着父亲般的自豪感宣布：“今天是它的生日！”

　　Massaging¹⁷ a cayman

　　为美洲鳄做按摩

　　Reptiles¹⁸ were never frightening to him, only fun. The little spectacled cayman, mysterious in its glass case in his boyhood bedroom, or so super-still, sitting on his head like a tiny allosaurus with its cool claws in his hair; the pet boa constrictor, in beautiful reticulated loops, swimming across the family pool; the snakes from the bog¹⁹ behind his house in suburban²⁰ Norwood, New Jersey²¹, where he would spend whole days squelching²² and hunting. He retained that obsessiveness²³ and excitement, never growing out of them. His college thesis was on the spectacled cayman; he lived in Gainesville, Florida, where alligators sun on the paths; his favourite work involved drifting, by torchlight, in a silent punt among the vegetation mats of the Mamirauá in Brazil or the llanos of Venezuela, with crocodilians darkly all about him, or looping them up on a six-foot pole to take DNA²⁴ samples from them and massage²⁵ their scaly²⁶ necks. It was while looking for dwarf²⁷ cayman in Uganda in February that he seems to have contracted the malaria²⁸ that killed him.

　　于他而言，爬行类动物一点不可怕，反而是乐趣。小眼镜美洲鳄不可思议地躺在他孩提时代卧室的玻璃箱里，或者像一只把冷僳僳的爪子抓住他头发的小霸王龙，如此安静地坐在他的头上；备受宠爱的大王蟒呈迷人的环状，在他的家用池子里来回游动；在新泽西洲诺伍德郊区，他住房后面的泥塘，是他愿意整天在里面咯吱咯吱行走并猎物的乐土，那里有种种蛇类。他乐此不疲、兴奋异常、从不言弃。他的大学论文就是写的有眼镜状斑纹的美洲鳄；他曾经居住的地方——佛罗里达州的盖恩斯维尔，鳄鱼在小路上晒太阳；借着手电的光亮，划着静行无声的平底船，在巴西的马尔马拉或委内瑞拉的亚诺斯河流植物垫衬的水中漂流，是他所钟爱的工作的一部分，其间，黑色鳄鱼遍及他的四周，或者，把鳄鱼环绕在一个6英尺长的杆子上，以采集它们的DNA样本，然后按摩它们那多鳞的脖子。今年2月，他在乌干达寻找小美洲鳄时，似乎染上了致他于死命的疟疾。

　　He had made a start on his rescue plans, but barely. Thanks to him, the Chinese alligator¹³ and the Orinoco crocodile were just beginning to recover; but the Siamese crocodile and the “amazing” slim-nosed gharial of India were still right on the edge. He struggled to persuade people who lived alongside crocodilians to see them not as pests, but as friends. He tried to train the locals to collect eggs carefully for a cash reward; to hunt and kill only adult males, under legal quotas²⁹, and leave the breeding females; to act as stewards³⁰ of creatures that were precious and useful. Foreign governments usually supported him, but seldom produced much funding.

　　就他的救援计划而言，他作了一个开端，不过这已很不容易了。幸亏有了他，中国扬子鳄和奥里诺科河鳄鱼才得以开始复苏；不过，暹罗鳄和“惊奇”小鼻印度鳄至今还在濒危边缘艰难复苏。他努力说服与鳄鱼在同一生存环境的人们不把它们看成害虫，而是朋友。他努力训练当地人仔细搜集可获得现金奖励的鳄蛋；只根据法定指标捕杀成年雄鳄，并把有繁殖力的雌鳄保留下来；担当起弥足珍贵和切实有效的动物管理员的角色。外国政府通常会支持他，但很少提供大量资金。

　　Primal³¹ fear, too, was hard to eradicate³². When a farm duck was taken at night, or a swimmer disappeared, a crocodile or alligator would usually be blamed. In the popular mind they became huge beasts, invisibly inhabiting any murky³³ stretch of water. Mr Thorbjarnarson would repeat that they were not like that. Most riverine accidents had nothing to do with them. And the only giant crocodile he knew of was the mythical³⁴ kyunpatgyi, after which he was nicknamed by friends in Burma, which with the help of several beers could be seen swimming round a local island and surely with a smile.

　　人们对鳄鱼的原始恐惧太难根除。当一只农田鸭子在夜间消失、或一位游泳者失踪，通常会归咎于鳄鱼或短吻鳄。按大众的思维方式，它们无踪无影地栖息于任何一个阴暗水域，是巨兽。约翰?瑟布贾纳森总是一再重申，它们不像人们认为的那样。河边发生的大部分事故与它们无关。而他所听说的唯一巨鳄只是神话中的kyunpatgyi，之后，他因此被几个缅甸朋友起了绰号，这个叫作kyunpatgyi巨鳄的他， 数杯啤酒下肚， 就能环绕当地的小岛游泳， 就像传说中的巨鳄那样， 还当真地带着微笑。

分享到：