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Big Cats and People Live in Close Quarters in India 远离”大猫”

“In India, as a consequence of stricter protection of wildlife and increased tolerance¹, numbers of large carnivores are increasing in private lands and lands outside the protected-area systems.” Ullas Karanth of the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society and India’s Centre for Wildlife Studies.

由于印度在不断加大对野生动物的保护，同时生态系统的宽容性增加，私人领域以及保护区外中大型食肉动物的数量正在不断增加。Ullas Karanth隶属于美国野生动物保护协会和印度野生动物研究中心。

“While this is a good thing for conservation it poses serious problems for management because occasionally these interactions turn hostile, between people and carnivores. And this issue is particularly serious with leopards².”

虽然保护动物是件好事，但是同时也对管理造成了严重的问题。因为有时候，人和食肉动物之间的关系是敌对的。而人与豹子之间的问题愈发严峻。

Karanth and his team studied interactions between people and leopards in Karnataka, a state in India’s southwest that’s home to more than 60 million people. Leopards can be found in 47 percent of the state, in areas outside parks and other sanctuaries³. So people and leopards do, every once in a while, run into each other.

Karanth和他的研究小组研究了卡纳塔克邦人与豹之间的关系。卡纳塔克邦位于印度西南部，约有6千万人口。在国家公园和其他保护区之外的地方，这个国家47%的区域都可以发现豹子。所以人和豹子会偶尔遇到对方。

To gauge⁴ the frequency of such interactions, the researchers scoured⁵ media reports during a 14-month period from 2013 to 2014. The total tally⁶ was 245 separate incidents. Most were attacks on livestock⁷ or simple sightings of the leopards by people. But leopards did attack people 32 times, causing three deaths. Thirty-four leopards died in the study period, mostly from poaching and being hit by vehicles. Capturing and relocating the animals did not seem to be an effective way to cut down on animal-human contacts. The study is in the journal PLoS ONE.

为了测量人和豹子的互动频率，研究人员研究了从2013年到2014年长达12月的相关的媒体报道。总共有245篇独立的事故发生。大多数报道都是关于豹子袭击家畜或者是人们看到豹子的踪迹。在以上的研究期间，3/4的豹子死亡，死亡原因大都是因为被猎杀或者被车辆撞死。捕杀动物或者迁徙似乎并没有减少人和动物之间的接触。该研究结果发表在《PLoS ONE》杂志上。

So how can the large carnivores and people better coexist? The researchers think that an obvious but important step is to get a lot more data on just where leopards are most likely to be found in populated areas, so people can avoid the cats. And that farmers should be quickly and fairly compensated⁸ for any livestock losses. Which seems to be a better alternative than trying to hunt down and kill or move the offending animal.

所以，如何能让大型食肉动物和人类共存呢?研究人员认为，重要的是获得在人口密集区豹子的活跃区域，这样的话，人们就能够远离这只大猫。农民也能够迅速公平地得到牲畜损失的补偿。与捕杀或迁徙这些攻击性动物，这似乎是一种更好的办法。