John Thorbjarnarson

　　約翰瑟布賈納森;

　　John Thorbjarnarson,saviour of crocodilesdied， onFebruary 14th, aged 52;

　　鱷魚救助者約翰瑟布賈納森于2月14日去世，英年52歲。

　　THE rippling fire of the tiger, the cuddliness of thepanda, the viridian flash of the green-cheekedparrot, all argue that these most-endangeredspecies should be saved. It s harder to make thecase for crocodilians. That bony, hideous head, withits unblinking yellow eye; those huge teeth, smellywith fish-debris, overhanging the long, cruel, curling smile; the slithering slide of the whiteunderside down a muddy slope, into the water where those jaws, the strongest in Nature,will smash round the leg of a man and pull him under, thrashing and screaming.

　　所有人都堅決主張，擁有火焰般花紋的虎、讓人禁不住想擁抱的熊貓、閃著翠綠光芒的綠頰鸚鵡這些最瀕危的物種應得到保護。而保護鱷魚更困難。鱷魚它骨骼突出、頭部奇丑、頭部有著不眨的黃眼晴，它牙齒巨大，且嵌有難聞的魚碎片，顯出長長的、無情的、撅唇的冷笑，它搖擺著白色的腹部向泥濘的斜坡下滑去，沒入水中。在水里，自然界最強壯的生物鱷魚的嘴會在人四肢反復掙脫和凄漓尖叫中，絞斷人的腿并把人拖入水中。

　　John Thorbjarnarson knew he could not end men s fear of crocodilians, hard-wired sincehominids first ventured down from the trees into swamps that seethed with them. But in his20-odd years working for the Wildlife Conservation Society he did more than anyone else totry. He commended the grace of their straight, silent swimming, their camouflagemottlings of yellow, grey and olive green, and the jewelled beauty of new, damp hatchlingsno bigger than the span of his hand. He stressed their cultural importance, even magic: thedragon of China, bringer of good fortune, and the water god of ancient Egypt who made thegrasses green. He extolled their niceness, snapping them as they basked companionably onwarm mud or on a favourite bank of long grass, the forefoot of one embracing the back ofanother. Most crocodilians, he reminded people, preferred to dine on fish or molluscs ratherthan farmers. Most were sensitive, even shy.

　　約翰?瑟布賈納森知道，自人類首次冒險從樹上直接落入鱷魚渲騰的沼澤中以來，他不可能終結人們對鱷魚的恐懼。但在他為野生動物保護協會工作的20多年歲月里，他比其他人更勤于冒險。他欣賞鱷魚那筆直、無聲的泳行雅姿，他欣賞鱷魚那黃色、灰色和橄欖綠相間的偽裝斑，他欣賞那如寶石美人般的、剛剛出生、渾身濕漉漉的、與他的手臂等長的幼鱷。他強調鱷魚文化的重要性，甚至著迷于好運守護神中國龍，使草地變綠的古埃及水神。他稱頌鱷魚的漂亮，當鱷魚們在暖和的爛泥中懶洋洋地曬太陽，或在舒適的長草坡上，一只鱷魚的前足趴在另一只鱷魚的背上時，他拍攝它們。他提醒人們，大多數鱷魚寧愿吃魚或軟體動物而不愿吃農夫。大多數鱷魚敏感、甚至膽小。

　　He also warned the world how scarce they were. Before he began to catalogue them as apostgraduate, drawing up in 1988 an action plan to save them, all 23 species of crocodilianswere threatened or declining. Their numbers had been destroyed by man s hatred and thehandbag trade. Only a few years ago, exploring the Brazilian Amazon, Mr Thorbjarnarsonfound black cayman hunted indiscriminately, like fish.Patrolling the mouth of the Yangzi in 1997, where swamps had been turned into urban sprawlor rice fields, he counted only 120 Chinese alligators still in the wild. Here he began anintensive strategy of egg-collecting, captive rearing in the Bronx Zoo, and release. To hisdelight, the alligators from the Bronx remembered what to do.

　　他還向世人發出警告，鱷魚是多么的稀少。1988年，即在他作為一名研究生起草一份拯救鱷魚的行動計劃而對鱷魚進行登記分類之前，所有23種鱷魚都受到威脅或瀕危。鱷魚的數量由于人們對它們的憎惡和鱷魚皮包交易而減少。僅在幾年前，在探險巴西亞馬遜河的過程中，約翰?瑟布賈納森先生發現了被像魚類一樣不分青紅皂白地獵殺的美洲黑鱷。在1997年巡查長江入海口的過程中，他估摸仍在野外的僅有120只揚子鱷。于是他在此開始了一項十分細致的揚子鱷蛋收集行動，然后在布朗克斯動物園人工飼養，再放歸大自然。令他高興的是，布朗克斯的揚子鱷還記得如何在野外生存。

　　Crocodilians, he explained, were much more like birds than snakes. They built nests he hadto hunt for, poling his punt along sandbanks to find their holes or poking in the forest debrisunder the trees: a thin, laconic, clear-eyed figure as quiet and unobtrusive as thecreatures he was trailing. He watched them brood their young, listening for the cheeps thatannounced the eggs were hatching and carrying the young to water. The Nile crocodilerolled its eggs gently in its teeth to help them hatch. In the WCS labs at the Bronx Zoo hewould pull the papery, blood-pink shell from a hatchling and announce: It s his birthday!with a father s pride.

　　他解釋道，與蛇比起來，鱷魚明顯更像鳥。鱷魚們構筑他必須得通過尋找才能見到的巢穴，他是通過順著沙洲劃平底船、或是撥弄林中植物沉積物去尋找。他這種安全性差、手段簡單、但目的明確的尋找方式一似他正在跟蹤的鱷魚一樣，不事聲張、不引人注意。他通過注意傾聽預示鱷蛋正在破殼和送雛鱷入水時的雛鱷吱叫聲，觀察鱷魚孵育雛鱷的過程。尼羅河鱷是通過在其齒腔內輕輕滾動鱷蛋來幫助孵化。在布朗克斯野生動物保護協會的實驗室里，他從一個人工孵化的雛鱷身上扯下如紙一樣薄的血紅色蛋殼，帶著父親般的自豪感宣布：今天是它的生日!

　　Massaging a cayman

　　為美洲鱷做按摩

　　Reptiles were never frightening to him, only fun. The little spectacled cayman, mysteriousin its glass case in his boyhood bedroom, or so super-still, sitting on his head like a tinyallosaurus with its cool claws in his hair; the pet boa constrictor, in beautiful reticulated loops,swimming across the family pool; the snakes from the bog behind his house in suburbanNorwood, New Jersey, where he would spend whole days squelching and hunting. He retainedthat obsessiveness and excitement, never growing out of them. His college thesis was on thespectacled cayman; he lived in Gainesville, Florida, where alligators sun on the paths; hisfavourite work involved drifting, by torchlight, in a silent punt among the vegetation mats ofthe Mamirau in Brazil or the llanos of Venezuela, with crocodilians darkly all about him, orlooping them up on a six-foot pole to take DNA samples from them and massage their scalynecks. It was while looking for dwarf cayman in Uganda in February that he seems to havecontracted the malaria that killed him.

　　于他而言，爬行類動物一點不可怕，反而是樂趣。小眼鏡美洲鱷不可思議地躺在他孩提時代臥室的玻璃箱里，或者像一只把冷僳僳的爪子抓住他頭發的小霸王龍，如此安靜地坐在他的頭上;備受寵愛的大王蟒呈迷人的環狀，在他的家用池子里來回游動;在新澤西洲諾伍德郊區，他住房后面的泥塘，是他愿意整天在里面咯吱咯吱行走并獵物的樂土，那里有種種蛇類。他樂此不疲、興奮異常、從不言棄。他的大學論文就是寫的有眼鏡狀斑紋的美洲鱷;他曾經居住的地方佛羅里達州的蓋恩斯維爾，鱷魚在小路上曬太陽;借著手電的光亮，劃著靜行無聲的平底船，在巴西的馬爾馬拉或委內瑞拉的亞諾斯河流植物墊襯的水中漂流，是他所鐘愛的工作的一部分，其間，黑色鱷魚遍及他的四周，或者，把鱷魚環繞在一個6英尺長的桿子上，以采集它們的DNA樣本，然后按摩它們那多鱗的脖子。今年2月，他在烏干達尋找小美洲鱷時，似乎染上了致他于死命的瘧疾。

　　He had made a start on his rescue plans, but barely. Thanks to him, the Chinese alligatorand the Orinoco crocodile were just beginning to recover; but the Siamese crocodile and theamazing slim-nosed gharial of India were still right on the edge. He struggled to persuadepeople who lived alongside crocodilians to see them not as pests, but as friends. He tried totrain the locals to collect eggs carefully for a cash reward; to hunt and kill only adult males,under legal quotas, and leave the breeding females; to act as stewards of creatures thatwere precious and useful. Foreign governments usually supported him, but seldom producedmuch funding.

　　就他的救援計劃而言，他作了一個開端，不過這已很不容易了。幸虧有了他，中國揚子鱷和奧里諾科河鱷魚才得以開始復蘇;不過，暹羅鱷和驚奇小鼻印度鱷至今還在瀕危邊緣艱難復蘇。他努力說服與鱷魚在同一生存環境的人們不把它們看成害蟲，而是朋友。他努力訓練當地人仔細搜集可獲得現金獎勵的鱷蛋;只根據法定指標捕殺成年雄鱷，并把有繁殖力的雌鱷保留下來;擔當起彌足珍貴和切實有效的動物管理員的角色。外國政府通常會支持他，但很少提供大量資金。

　　Primal fear, too, was hard to eradicate. When a farm duck was taken at night, or aswimmer disappeared, a crocodile or alligator would usually be blamed. In the popular mindthey became huge beasts, invisibly inhabiting any murky stretch of water. MrThorbjarnarson would repeat that they were not like that. Most riverine accidents had nothingto do with them. And the only giant crocodile he knew of was the mythical kyunpatgyi, afterwhich he was nicknamed by friends in Burma, which with the help of several beers could beseen swimming round a local island and surely with a smile.

　　人們對鱷魚的原始恐懼太難根除。當一只農田鴨子在夜間消失、或一位游泳者失蹤，通常會歸咎于鱷魚或短吻鱷。按大眾的思維方式，它們無蹤無影地棲息于任何一個陰暗水域，是巨獸。約翰?瑟布賈納森總是一再重申，它們不像人們認為的那樣。河邊發生的大部分事故與它們無關。而他所聽說的唯一巨鱷只是神話中的kyunpatgyi，之后，他因此被幾個緬甸朋友起了綽號，這個叫作kyunpatgyi巨鱷的他， 數杯啤酒下肚， 就能環繞當地的小島游泳， 就像傳說中的巨鱷那樣， 還當真地帶著微笑。

　　John Thorbjarnarson

　　約翰瑟布賈納森;

　　John Thorbjarnarson,saviour of crocodilesdied， onFebruary 14th, aged 52;

　　鱷魚救助者約翰瑟布賈納森于2月14日去世，英年52歲。

　　THE rippling fire of the tiger, the cuddliness of thepanda, the viridian flash of the green-cheekedparrot, all argue that these most-endangeredspecies should be saved. It s harder to make thecase for crocodilians. That bony, hideous head, withits unblinking yellow eye; those huge teeth, smellywith fish-debris, overhanging the long, cruel, curling smile; the slithering slide of the whiteunderside down a muddy slope, into the water where those jaws, the strongest in Nature,will smash round the leg of a man and pull him under, thrashing and screaming.

　　所有人都堅決主張，擁有火焰般花紋的虎、讓人禁不住想擁抱的熊貓、閃著翠綠光芒的綠頰鸚鵡這些最瀕危的物種應得到保護。而保護鱷魚更困難。鱷魚它骨骼突出、頭部奇丑、頭部有著不眨的黃眼晴，它牙齒巨大，且嵌有難聞的魚碎片，顯出長長的、無情的、撅唇的冷笑，它搖擺著白色的腹部向泥濘的斜坡下滑去，沒入水中。在水里，自然界最強壯的生物鱷魚的嘴會在人四肢反復掙脫和凄漓尖叫中，絞斷人的腿并把人拖入水中。

　　John Thorbjarnarson knew he could not end men s fear of crocodilians, hard-wired sincehominids first ventured down from the trees into swamps that seethed with them. But in his20-odd years working for the Wildlife Conservation Society he did more than anyone else totry. He commended the grace of their straight, silent swimming, their camouflagemottlings of yellow, grey and olive green, and the jewelled beauty of new, damp hatchlingsno bigger than the span of his hand. He stressed their cultural importance, even magic: thedragon of China, bringer of good fortune, and the water god of ancient Egypt who made thegrasses green. He extolled their niceness, snapping them as they basked companionably onwarm mud or on a favourite bank of long grass, the forefoot of one embracing the back ofanother. Most crocodilians, he reminded people, preferred to dine on fish or molluscs ratherthan farmers. Most were sensitive, even shy.

　　約翰?瑟布賈納森知道，自人類首次冒險從樹上直接落入鱷魚渲騰的沼澤中以來，他不可能終結人們對鱷魚的恐懼。但在他為野生動物保護協會工作的20多年歲月里，他比其他人更勤于冒險。他欣賞鱷魚那筆直、無聲的泳行雅姿，他欣賞鱷魚那黃色、灰色和橄欖綠相間的偽裝斑，他欣賞那如寶石美人般的、剛剛出生、渾身濕漉漉的、與他的手臂等長的幼鱷。他強調鱷魚文化的重要性，甚至著迷于好運守護神中國龍，使草地變綠的古埃及水神。他稱頌鱷魚的漂亮，當鱷魚們在暖和的爛泥中懶洋洋地曬太陽，或在舒適的長草坡上，一只鱷魚的前足趴在另一只鱷魚的背上時，他拍攝它們。他提醒人們，大多數鱷魚寧愿吃魚或軟體動物而不愿吃農夫。大多數鱷魚敏感、甚至膽小。

　　He also warned the world how scarce they were. Before he began to catalogue them as apostgraduate, drawing up in 1988 an action plan to save them, all 23 species of crocodilianswere threatened or declining. Their numbers had been destroyed by man s hatred and thehandbag trade. Only a few years ago, exploring the Brazilian Amazon, Mr Thorbjarnarsonfound black cayman hunted indiscriminately, like fish.Patrolling the mouth of the Yangzi in 1997, where swamps had been turned into urban sprawlor rice fields, he counted only 120 Chinese alligators still in the wild. Here he began anintensive strategy of egg-collecting, captive rearing in the Bronx Zoo, and release. To hisdelight, the alligators from the Bronx remembered what to do.

　　他還向世人發出警告，鱷魚是多么的稀少。1988年，即在他作為一名研究生起草一份拯救鱷魚的行動計劃而對鱷魚進行登記分類之前，所有23種鱷魚都受到威脅或瀕危。鱷魚的數量由于人們對它們的憎惡和鱷魚皮包交易而減少。僅在幾年前，在探險巴西亞馬遜河的過程中，約翰?瑟布賈納森先生發現了被像魚類一樣不分青紅皂白地獵殺的美洲黑鱷。在1997年巡查長江入海口的過程中，他估摸仍在野外的僅有120只揚子鱷。于是他在此開始了一項十分細致的揚子鱷蛋收集行動，然后在布朗克斯動物園人工飼養，再放歸大自然。令他高興的是，布朗克斯的揚子鱷還記得如何在野外生存。

　　Crocodilians, he explained, were much more like birds than snakes. They built nests he hadto hunt for, poling his punt along sandbanks to find their holes or poking in the forest debrisunder the trees: a thin, laconic, clear-eyed figure as quiet and unobtrusive as thecreatures he was trailing. He watched them brood their young, listening for the cheeps thatannounced the eggs were hatching and carrying the young to water. The Nile crocodilerolled its eggs gently in its teeth to help them hatch. In the WCS labs at the Bronx Zoo hewould pull the papery, blood-pink shell from a hatchling and announce: It s his birthday!with a father s pride.

　　他解釋道，與蛇比起來，鱷魚明顯更像鳥。鱷魚們構筑他必須得通過尋找才能見到的巢穴，他是通過順著沙洲劃平底船、或是撥弄林中植物沉積物去尋找。他這種安全性差、手段簡單、但目的明確的尋找方式一似他正在跟蹤的鱷魚一樣，不事聲張、不引人注意。他通過注意傾聽預示鱷蛋正在破殼和送雛鱷入水時的雛鱷吱叫聲，觀察鱷魚孵育雛鱷的過程。尼羅河鱷是通過在其齒腔內輕輕滾動鱷蛋來幫助孵化。在布朗克斯野生動物保護協會的實驗室里，他從一個人工孵化的雛鱷身上扯下如紙一樣薄的血紅色蛋殼，帶著父親般的自豪感宣布：今天是它的生日!

　　Massaging a cayman

　　為美洲鱷做按摩

　　Reptiles were never frightening to him, only fun. The little spectacled cayman, mysteriousin its glass case in his boyhood bedroom, or so super-still, sitting on his head like a tinyallosaurus with its cool claws in his hair; the pet boa constrictor, in beautiful reticulated loops,swimming across the family pool; the snakes from the bog behind his house in suburbanNorwood, New Jersey, where he would spend whole days squelching and hunting. He retainedthat obsessiveness and excitement, never growing out of them. His college thesis was on thespectacled cayman; he lived in Gainesville, Florida, where alligators sun on the paths; hisfavourite work involved drifting, by torchlight, in a silent punt among the vegetation mats ofthe Mamirau in Brazil or the llanos of Venezuela, with crocodilians darkly all about him, orlooping them up on a six-foot pole to take DNA samples from them and massage their scalynecks. It was while looking for dwarf cayman in Uganda in February that he seems to havecontracted the malaria that killed him.

　　于他而言，爬行類動物一點不可怕，反而是樂趣。小眼鏡美洲鱷不可思議地躺在他孩提時代臥室的玻璃箱里，或者像一只把冷僳僳的爪子抓住他頭發的小霸王龍，如此安靜地坐在他的頭上;備受寵愛的大王蟒呈迷人的環狀，在他的家用池子里來回游動;在新澤西洲諾伍德郊區，他住房后面的泥塘，是他愿意整天在里面咯吱咯吱行走并獵物的樂土，那里有種種蛇類。他樂此不疲、興奮異常、從不言棄。他的大學論文就是寫的有眼鏡狀斑紋的美洲鱷;他曾經居住的地方佛羅里達州的蓋恩斯維爾，鱷魚在小路上曬太陽;借著手電的光亮，劃著靜行無聲的平底船，在巴西的馬爾馬拉或委內瑞拉的亞諾斯河流植物墊襯的水中漂流，是他所鐘愛的工作的一部分，其間，黑色鱷魚遍及他的四周，或者，把鱷魚環繞在一個6英尺長的桿子上，以采集它們的DNA樣本，然后按摩它們那多鱗的脖子。今年2月，他在烏干達尋找小美洲鱷時，似乎染上了致他于死命的瘧疾。

　　He had made a start on his rescue plans, but barely. Thanks to him, the Chinese alligatorand the Orinoco crocodile were just beginning to recover; but the Siamese crocodile and theamazing slim-nosed gharial of India were still right on the edge. He struggled to persuadepeople who lived alongside crocodilians to see them not as pests, but as friends. He tried totrain the locals to collect eggs carefully for a cash reward; to hunt and kill only adult males,under legal quotas, and leave the breeding females; to act as stewards of creatures thatwere precious and useful. Foreign governments usually supported him, but seldom producedmuch funding.

　　就他的救援計劃而言，他作了一個開端，不過這已很不容易了。幸虧有了他，中國揚子鱷和奧里諾科河鱷魚才得以開始復蘇;不過，暹羅鱷和驚奇小鼻印度鱷至今還在瀕危邊緣艱難復蘇。他努力說服與鱷魚在同一生存環境的人們不把它們看成害蟲，而是朋友。他努力訓練當地人仔細搜集可獲得現金獎勵的鱷蛋;只根據法定指標捕殺成年雄鱷，并把有繁殖力的雌鱷保留下來;擔當起彌足珍貴和切實有效的動物管理員的角色。外國政府通常會支持他，但很少提供大量資金。

　　Primal fear, too, was hard to eradicate. When a farm duck was taken at night, or aswimmer disappeared, a crocodile or alligator would usually be blamed. In the popular mindthey became huge beasts, invisibly inhabiting any murky stretch of water. MrThorbjarnarson would repeat that they were not like that. Most riverine accidents had nothingto do with them. And the only giant crocodile he knew of was the mythical kyunpatgyi, afterwhich he was nicknamed by friends in Burma, which with the help of several beers could beseen swimming round a local island and surely with a smile.

　　人們對鱷魚的原始恐懼太難根除。當一只農田鴨子在夜間消失、或一位游泳者失蹤，通常會歸咎于鱷魚或短吻鱷。按大眾的思維方式，它們無蹤無影地棲息于任何一個陰暗水域，是巨獸。約翰?瑟布賈納森總是一再重申，它們不像人們認為的那樣。河邊發生的大部分事故與它們無關。而他所聽說的唯一巨鱷只是神話中的kyunpatgyi，之后，他因此被幾個緬甸朋友起了綽號，這個叫作kyunpatgyi巨鱷的他， 數杯啤酒下肚， 就能環繞當地的小島游泳， 就像傳說中的巨鱷那樣， 還當真地帶著微笑。