印度“食人虎”出沒，村民惶恐不安

印度“食人虎”出沒，村民惶恐不安

NEW DELHI — No one has lived long enough to describe the tiger in detail, but some things about her are known. She traverses great stretches of land in a day and is comfortable wandering deep into human territory. After killing her first three or four people, she began to eat her victims — starting rump-first, one expert said, as she would a deer.

新德里——有關那只雌虎的詳細情況，沒有人活著回來告訴大家。不過，有些事情還是清楚的。它每天活動范圍很大，不怕深入到人類領地的深處。起初咬死了三四個人之后，它已經(jīng)開始吃人。一名專家表示，就像吃鹿一樣，它先從人的臀部下口。

Though it is impossible to say with certainty whether the same tiger is at fault, last weekend brought the 10th death in six weeks widely attributed to the “man-eater,” as Indian newspapers have called her.

盡管無法確切地知道元兇是否為同一只老虎，但是截止上周末，六周里發(fā)生的10起命案被廣泛歸咎于這只“食人虎”，這是印度報章給它起的綽號。

Conflicts with humans are arising precisely in the handful of places where the endangered Bengal tiger population has rebounded thanks to careful conservation efforts, said Ullas Karanth, a wildlife biologist who runs the India program of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

野生生物保護學會(Wildlife Conservation Society)的印度項目負責人、野生生物學家烏拉斯·卡蘭斯(Ullas Karanth)表示，得益于精心的保護行動，瀕危的孟加拉虎種群數(shù)量在一些地方有所恢復，而與人類沖突加劇的地方正好在其中幾片區(qū)域。

“These conflicts are the price of conservation success,” he said.

“這些沖突是成功保護的代價，”他說。

But where conservation efforts have helped shore up tiger populations, the hulking, half-ton cats encroach on settlements that are unaccustomed to them. In the wake of each attack, the tigers are met with a noisy furor, instead of the subdued, systematic dragnet used by earlier generations long used to living near tigers to guide them back into the forest.

然而，就在保護行動幫助增加了老虎種群數(shù)量的地區(qū)，這種體型碩大、重達半噸的貓科動物也在侵犯那些不知如何與之共存的人類的聚居區(qū)。每次攻擊發(fā)生之后，老虎都會面臨巨大的公憤，而慣于同老虎比鄰而居的早幾代人以前會冷靜地使用系統(tǒng)性的搜索方法，將老虎引回森林中去。

“What works, in my opinion, are like surgical operations, you need a small team of trained people on elephants to quietly allow the tiger to stay in the area,” Mr. Karanth said in a telephone interview. “Instead, mobs come, then there is a military campaign, they keep pushing the animal and make it harder and harder to catch.”

“在我看來，有效的辦法應該是干凈利落的行動，需要一小隊騎在象背上的受訓人員，安靜地讓老虎待在這一地區(qū)，”卡蘭斯通過電話接受采訪稱。“結果，暴民來了，然后是軍事進攻，他們不停地逼迫老虎，搞得越來越難以抓到它。”

Anxiety has mounted gradually since Dec. 29, when the first victim, a farmer, was found mauled in a sugarcane field in the state of Uttar Pradesh. Around a week later, 20 miles to the north, a young man told a television crew that he was standing with his sister when a tiger “caught her by the neck and took her away, into the sugarcane.” A string of attacks continued, tracing a 90-mile journey north toward the Jim Corbett National Park, across the state border in Uttarakhand, a nature preserve that claims one of the world’s densest tiger populations and is named for a tiger hunter and conservationist.

自12月29日首次出現(xiàn)受害者以來，焦慮情緒與日俱增。當時，人們發(fā)現(xiàn)北方邦的一名務農(nóng)者被咬死在甘蔗地里。大約一周后，該地以北20英里(約合30公里)處，一名男青年在電視上說，他和姐妹站在一起，一只老虎“突然咬住她的脖子，把她拖進了甘蔗地。”此后又連續(xù)發(fā)生了幾起攻擊事件，延伸到往北90英里遠的吉姆·科比特國家公園(Jim Corbett National Park)。這所公園在臨近的北安恰爾邦，是一座自然保護區(qū)，擁有世界上最密集的老虎種群，以一位獵虎人轉型的生態(tài)保護學家命名。

On Sunday morning, a 45-year-old worker named Ram Charan got out of a car to relieve himself on a roadside in the Jim Corbett National Park. When his companions ran toward his screams, they found him some 60 feet into the forest, the flesh torn off his thighs. After he died, angry villagers surrounded a forestry service outpost, trapping personnel inside for some time, said Shiv Shankar Singh, the top bureaucrat from the neighboring district of Moradabad, in a telephone interview.

周日上午，名為拉姆·查蘭(Ram Charan)的45歲工人下了車，在吉姆·科比特國家公園內(nèi)的路邊小便。當同伴聽到他的尖叫聲跑過去的時候，發(fā)現(xiàn)他被拖進了林子里大約60英尺(約合20米)遠的地方，大腿皮開肉綻。附近的莫拉達巴德縣的縣長希夫·尚卡爾·辛格(Shiv Shankar Singh)接受電話采訪稱，查蘭死后，憤怒的村民包圍了一處林業(yè)崗哨，把里面的人員圍困了一段時間。

“They say, ‘Give us guns, and we will kill the tigress,’ ” Mr. Singh said in a telephone interview. “They say, ‘If your family members were getting killed, you would realize what kind of pain we are in.’ They are angry and afraid, so their tempers are running high.”

“他們喊，‘給我們槍，我們要打死那只母老虎，’”辛格在電話中說。“他們喊，‘如果你們的家人被殺了，你們就能理解我們現(xiàn)在這種痛苦了。’他們又氣又怕，所以情緒很激動。”

Trackers have gradually pieced together a portrait: The paw print, roughly five inches wide, suggests a female — a breeding one, since her canines are intact, said Belinda Wright, executive director of the Wildlife Protection Society of India. One paw does not lay flat on the ground, suggesting the tiger is injured, Ms. Wright said. The nature of the tiger’s attacks on humans seemed to change noticeably after the first three or four attacks, Ms. Wright said, when “she realized how easy it is to kill people and that they’re actually quite tasty.”

動物追蹤人士慢慢拼出了事情的全貌：爪印大約有五英寸寬，表明是只雌虎。印度野生生物保護協(xié)會(Wildlife Protection Society of India)的總干事貝琳達·懷特(Belinda Wright)稱，由于犬齒完好，這只老虎具備繁殖能力;它的一只爪子落地不平，說明受了傷。懷特還表示，它攻擊了人類三四次后，性質似乎發(fā)生了顯著的轉變，那時“它意識到，咬死人很容易，而且人肉還挺好吃。”

Tigers who have become “man-eaters” must be killed, she said, but they are extraordinarily difficult to capture. “They just become like ghosts,” Ms. Wright said. “She can appear anywhere at any time in that district and take out another victim, and no one will ever see her. People might be standing next to her and she will just be a shocking blur.”

她表示，必須打死那些“食人虎”，但很難抓到它們。“它們變得像鬼魂一樣，” 懷特說。“它能夠隨時出現(xiàn)在那片區(qū)域的任何地方，拖走另一名受害者，沒人能看得見它。人們可能就在它身旁，它卻會突然消失不見，留下模糊的影子。”

So it was for Mr. Charan, a father of four, inside the Corbett Park on Sunday. Yogesh Kumar, 37, was ferrying him from one dam to another “in a normal, jovial mood,” and when he stopped the car to wait for some colleagues, Mr. Charan jumped out to urinate. Mr. Kumar was waiting in the car when he heard Mr. Charan screaming, “Save me, save me,” and “I am killed, I am killed.”

周日，查蘭在科比特公園就遇到了這種情況。查蘭是四個孩子的父親。當時，37歲的約格希·庫馬爾(ogesh Kumar)載著他從一座水壩到另一座水壩，他們“情緒穩(wěn)定，非常開心”。當他停下車等同事時，查蘭跳下車小便。庫馬爾在車中等待時，聽到查蘭大喊，“救命，救命”，“我要死了，我要死了。”

Four hundred people and two elephants have been combing the forest since then, working in expanding concentric circles, “working to establish the identity of the individual” who attacked Mr. Charan, said Samir Sinha, field director of Corbett National Park.

負責科比特國家公園野外工作的主管薩米爾·辛哈(Samir Sinha)表示，此后，他們安排了400人和兩頭大象在森林中進行搜查，不斷擴大搜索半徑，“努力確認襲擊查蘭的兇手”。

Across the state border in Uttar Pradesh, gunmen have been summoned and given license to kill. Sanjay Singh, a registered sharpshooter, was summoned by the forestry service after the seventh fatal attack, and has spent three weeks in the area. He said he believed she has moved to an area so densely forested that it is impossible to ride on elephants, as tiger trackers prefer, and he and a dozen trackers are patrolling on foot, combing the forest from morning until sunset.

在北方邦邊界的另一邊，相關機構已經(jīng)召集槍手，給予他們獵殺許可。在出現(xiàn)第七起致命襲擊事件之后，林業(yè)部門請來了登記在冊的神槍手桑賈伊·辛格(Sanjay Singh)，他在那里已經(jīng)待了三周。桑賈伊·辛格表示，他認為這只老虎已經(jīng)轉移到了一片茂密的森林里。在那里，追蹤者不可能像自己喜歡的那樣，騎著大象尋找。他和十幾名追蹤者徒步巡邏，從早晨到日落，一直在森林中搜尋。

“Now there is no alternative except to kill her,” he said. “Otherwise she will keep on killing people. It is a very dicey game, which is very dangerous, and thrilling, as well.”

“除了打死它，我們現(xiàn)在別無選擇，”他說。“否則，它會繼續(xù)害人。這是一個非常冒險、危險，但令人興奮的行動。”