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发表于 2014-10-11 04:39:12
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“普京之虎”越过俄中边界酿外交事件
“普京之虎”越过俄中边界酿外交事件
引自
http://cn.nytimes.com/world/20141011/c11tiger/+
北京——凶猛、机警、对红肉有无限欲望的西伯利亚虎（中国称东北虎——译注）库兹亚(Kuzya)已有23个月大，对于俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·V·普京(Vladimir V. Putin)来说，库兹亚似乎是一个完美的吉祥物。今年5月，普京亲手将它放归野外。
现在我们知道，原来库兹亚和普京一样，有着开拓疆土的野心。在这种野心的驱使下，库兹亚本周穿越中俄边境冰冷的阿穆尔河（中国称黑龙江——译注）。他的到来在一定程度上引发了外交事件，因为一家俄罗斯报纸称，“普京总统的老虎”在中国境内可能面临危险。
周五，中国东北地区负责野生动物管理工作的官员努力确定库兹亚的踪迹，俄罗斯的看管人员通过无线电发射器追踪库兹亚，他们担心库兹亚可能会落入偷猎者手中，鉴于稀有的西伯利亚虎在中国黑市能够卖出高价，这也不是不可能。
《新报》(Novaya Gazeta)本周报道称，“库兹亚还是有可能觉察到危险，在河流结冰前游回来。”
尽管环境管理工作时好时坏，中国是十分重视动物的——它们既能带来好运，又能充当全球外交大使（比如大熊猫）。
普京对动物也有铁汉柔情的一面，他经常被拍到与雪豹、北极熊和海豚等各种野兽欢闹的场景。
在众多涉及到动物的拍照活动中，格外引人瞩目的一次是他身穿白色连体服，驾驶着一架动力三角翼，引导一群濒临灭绝的西伯利亚鹤飞越国界迁徙，但最终失败。
莫斯科与北京的关系日益密切，两国在联合应对来自西方国家的挑战——据他们称这种挑战正越来越严重，鉴于这样的背景，中国官员似乎不会拿库兹亚的安全冒险。
周五，中国外交部表示，中国正在全力追踪并保护这只老虎。本周二，库兹亚从普京放生的地方行走了300英里（约合483公里），然后游过了阿穆尔河。
外交部发言人洪磊在一份声明中称，“我们将与俄方共同努力，做好在中俄两国之间来回的野生东北虎的保护工作。”
这一事件必然会引发讥笑，中国的一些人警告称库兹亚或许是间谍，俄罗斯人则称，库兹亚试图摆脱普京的独裁控制。英国《每日邮报》(Daily Mail)发表了题为《普京的老虎幼崽叛逃至中国》(Putin’s Tiger Cub Defects — to China)的报道。
在中国，很多微博用户预言称会出现不幸的结局。一名评述者写道，“可怜的老虎多久后会成为一些富有官员家里的地毯呢？”
即便中俄边境都加强了执法工作，野生动物保护人士表示，每年大约有40只老虎遭到非法猎杀。它们满足了中国对老虎可被用于制作中药和虎骨酒的身体部分日益增长的需求。
每一具老虎尸体价值1万美元（约合6.1万元人民币），偷猎者很难抗拒这个诱惑。
东亚地区的北方针叶林曾经有很多西伯利亚虎，但它们遭到猎杀，现在已经濒临灭绝。最近几年，西伯利亚虎数量出现了某种程度的恢复。这部分源于俄罗斯政府开始打击导致西伯利亚虎数量减少的非法采伐和偷猎。
老虎放生是普京宠物计划中的一项。
负责野生动物的官员称，俄罗斯远东地区共有370到450只西伯利亚虎生活在野外，而20世纪40年代仅有40只。中国的情况则没有这么乐观。
目前，中国境内的西伯利亚虎在20只上下。近年来，官员在老虎的潜在栖息地划出大量空地、拆除中国村民设置的陷阱，并对从事老虎买卖的人处以罚款及判处较长的徒刑，从而在保护老虎方面取得了巨大进展。
在中国吉林省负责运营世界自然基金会(World Wildlife Fund)亚洲大型猫科动物保护项目的李茜（Li Qian，音译）说，“这是一项艰苦的斗争，但情况正在改善。”
周四，黑龙江省萝北县林业局的官员称，他们正在设置60台红外相机，并派工人前去寻找当地村民为捕获各类野生动物而非法设置的陷阱。
萝北县林业局局长陈志刚表示，政府还准备释放牛群，以补充西伯利亚虎对赤鹿和野猪的日常需求，这两种动物在中国人口稠密的东北地区很少见。
他还表示，官员正试图减少当地居民的担忧。他告诉中国新闻社，“因为保护区以前从未出现过野生老虎。”
周五夜间，中国官方通讯社新华社报道称，普京于5月放生的另一只名为伊洛娜的雌性老虎据称离中俄边境仅有数英里。
国际爱护动物基金会(International Fund for Animal Welfare)在俄罗斯的负责人玛丽亚·沃龙特索娃(Maria Vorontsova)正在密切关注此事。沃龙特索娃参加了拯救库兹亚及其四个兄弟姐妹的队伍。将近两年前，一个偷猎者杀害了它们的母亲，于是这些老虎便成了孤儿。
她在电话中说，“这五只老虎在现存数量中占了超过1%，所以他们的存活具有重要意义。”
在一个封闭的环境里待了将近一年之后，5月，其中三只老虎被释放到了俄罗斯阿穆尔州的一个自然保护区。沃龙特索娃指出，是普京拉动了将库兹亚放生的绳索。
（她说，就在库兹亚迈入丛林之前，它无缘无故地猛击了记录他的放生过程的GoPro相机，这时她明白库兹亚很好斗。）
库兹亚的兄弟姐妹还留在附近，但它似乎很热衷于游荡，它曲折前进，穿过人烟稀少的犹太自治区，安全地通过公路和铁道，最后来到中国。一直在用卫星追踪它的行动的野生动物监管者称，它吃得很好，也避开了人类活动，这是被放生的老虎能生存下来的关键因素。
当被问到她是否认为库兹亚希望能通过潜入中国来表达某种政治观念，沃龙特索娃笑了。
“每个动物都希望能有这样一个栖息地，拥有足够的猎物，并且有机会遇到一只不错的雌性老虎，”她说。“同时，希望他不要遇到什么麻烦。”
杰安迪(Andrew Jacobs)是《纽约时报》驻京记者。
Kiki Zhao和Bree Feng自北京，Nicolai Khalip自莫斯科对本文有研究贡献。
翻译：许欣、陈柳
‘Putin’s Tiger’ Crosses Into China, Prompting a Diplomatic Rush
BEIJING — Virile, canny and possessed with a boundless appetite for red meat, Kuzya, a 23-month-old Siberian tiger, would seem the perfect mascot for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who had a personal hand in reintroducing Kuzya to the wild in the Russian Far East in May.
It turns out Kuzya, like Mr. Putin, has territorial ambitions, which this week drew him across the frigid Amur River that separates Russia and China. His arrival set off a diplomatic incident of sorts when it became clear that “President Putin’s Tiger,” as one Russian newspaper put it, was facing possible peril on the Chinese side of the border.
On Friday, wildlife officials in China’s far northeast were scrambling to ascertain Kuzya’s whereabouts after his Russian minders, tracking him by radio transmitter, expressed concern that he could up in the hands of poachers — not an unlikely outcome given the steep price a rare Siberian tiger can fetch on the Chinese black market.
“There is still hope that Kuzya will be sensible and swim back before the river turns to icy slush,” the newspaper Novaya Gazeta wrote this week.
Despite a spotty record of environmental stewardship, China holds animals in high regard — both as talismans of good fortune and as ambassadors for global diplomacy (see Giant Panda).
Mr. Putin, too, has a soft spot for animals, and he is frequently photographed cavorting with various wild beasts, including snow leopards, polar bears and dolphins.
In one of his more notable animal-related photo-ops, Mr. Putin, wearing white coveralls, strapped himself into a motorized hang glider in a failed attempt to lead a flock of endangered white Siberian cranes on a cross-country migration.
Given the increasingly close relations between Moscow and Beijing, united against what both countries see as a growing challenge from the West, it appears Chinese officials are taking no chances with Kuzya’s safety.
On Friday, the Foreign Ministry said prodigious efforts were being made to track and protect the tiger, which swam across the Amur on Tuesday after trekking some 300 miles from the spot where Mr. Putin presided over his release.
“We will make joint efforts with the Russian side to carry out protection of wild Siberian tigers which travel back and forth between China and Russia,” Hong Lei, a ministry spokesman, said in a statement.
The incident produced inevitable snickers, with some people in China warning that Kuzya might be a spy, and in Russia, that he was seeking to escape Mr. Putin’s authoritarian grip. “Putin’s Tiger Cub Defects — to China,” read the headline in the British tabloid The Daily Mail.
In China, many microblog users predicted an unhappy ending. “How long before this poor tiger becomes a rug in some rich official’s house?” one observer remarked.
Even with stepped-up enforcement on both sides of the border, wildlife advocates say about 40 tigers are illegally hunted each year. They feed China’s growing appetite for the tiger parts that are used in traditional Chinese medicine and tiger bone wine.
At $10,000 a carcass, the incentive for poachers is hard to resist.
Once abundant across the boreal forests of east Asia’s taiga but hunted to the brink of extinction, the Siberian tiger has made something of a comeback in recent years. That is due partly to efforts by the Russian government to combat the illegal logging and poaching that had reduced their numbers.
The tiger recovery effort has been one of Mr. Putin’s pet projects.
Wildlife officials say there are 370 to 450 Siberian tigers roaming the Russian Far East, up from 40 in the 1940s. Things are not as rosy on the Chinese side.
Fewer than two dozen tigers remain in China. Officials have made notable progress in recent years by setting aside vast tracts of potential tiger habitat, dismantling the snare traps set by Chinese villagers and imposing fines and significant jail time on those found trafficking in tiger parts.
“It’s an uphill battle, but things are getting better,” said Li Qian, who runs the Asian Big Cats program for the World Wildlife Fund in China’s Jilin Province.
On Thursday, officials with the Luobei County Forestry Bureau in Heilongjiang Province said they were installing 60 infrared cameras and dispatching workers to find the illegal traps that local villagers often set to catch an assortment of wildlife.
Chen Zhigang, the county’s forestry chief, said the government was also prepared to release cattle to supplement a tiger’s normal diet of red deer and wild boar, which are in short supply in China’s heavily populated northeast.
Officials, he added, were also working to assuage the fears of local residents “because there has never been a wild tiger in the reserve before,” he told the China News Service.
On Friday evening, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported that another one of the tigers Mr. Putin set free in May, a female named Ilona, was reportedly just a few miles from the Sino-Russian border.
Maria Vorontsova, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Russia, is following the events closely. Ms. Vorontsova was part of the team that rescued Kuzya and four siblings who were orphaned after a poacher killed their mother nearly two years ago.
“Five tigers represent more than 1 percent of the existing population, so it’s important they survive,” she said by phone.
After spending nearly a year in an enclosure, three of the tigers were released in May in a nature preserve in Russia’s Amur Region. It was Mr. Putin, Ms. Vorontsova noted, who pulled the rope that set Kuzya free.
(She said she knew Kuzya was a fighter when, moments before dashing into the woods, he took a gratuitous swipe at the GoPro camera recording his release.)
While some of his siblings stayed in the vicinity, Kuzya was apparently taken with wanderlust and zigzagged his way through the sparsely settled Jewish Autonomous Region, safely crossing highways and railroad tracks on his way to China. Wildlife rangers who have been tracking his movements by satellite said he was eating well and avoiding human activity, the key to a rehabilitated tiger’s survival.
Asked whether she thought Kuzya was looking to make some sort of political statement by sneaking into China, Ms. Vorontsova laughed.
“Every animal wants a good habitat with enough prey and the possibility to meet a nice female,” she said. “In the meantime, hopefully he won’t get into any trouble.”
Kiki Zhao and Bree Feng contributed research from Beijing. Nicolai Khalip contributed research from Moscow. |
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西伯利亚虎库兹亚。今年5月，他在西伯利亚被放生。
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