挪威300多头驯鹿遭雷电“劈死”

Lightning Strike Kills More Than 300 Reindeer in Norway

By HENRIK PRYSER LIBELLAugust 30, 2016

挪威300多头驯鹿遭雷电“劈死”

自然HENRIK PRYSER LIBELL2016年8月30日

Havard Kjotvedt//Norwegian Environment Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency

周日，强烈的暴风雨过后，挪威哈当厄高原的超过300头驯鹿死亡。

OSLO, Norway — Hardangervidda, a mountain plateau in southern Norway that is popular among tourists and hikers, is known for its natural beauty. As the seasons change, thousands of reindeer migrate across the plateau, moving between drier lands in the east, where they graze on lichens, and wetter lands in the west, where they breed.

挪威奥斯陆——挪威南部多山的哈当厄高原以天然美景著称，深受游客和徒步者欢迎。随着季节的变化，会有成千上万头驯鹿游走于高原各处，去东边较为干燥的土地上啃食地衣，去西边较为湿润的土地上繁衍。

But Friday, a storm transformed the plateau into a grisly scene. Lightning appeared to have killed an entire herd: 323 reindeer at last count.

但上周五，一场暴风雨把这片高原变成了恐怖之地。闪电似乎劈死了一整群驯鹿。最新统计显示，总计死掉323头。

“We are not familiar with any previous happening on such a scale,” Kjartan Knutsen, an official at the Nature Inspectorate, part of the Norwegian Environment Agency, said in a phone interview Monday. “Individual animals do from time to time get killed by lightning, and there are incidents where sheep have been killed in groups of 10 or even 20, but we have never seen anything like this.”

“我们没有听说以前发生过这么大规模的死亡事件，”挪威环境局(Norwegian Environment Agency)旗下自然监察署(Nature Inspectorate)的官员基亚尔坦·克努森(Kjartan Knutsen)周一接受电话采访时表示。“不时会有单只动物被雷电劈死，偶尔也有羊群死于闪电，一群有十只甚或二十只，但我们从来没见过这样的事情。”

Officials surmised that an extremely high discharge of electricity from the storm on Friday afternoon — and the interaction of the lightning with the earth and water — had electrocuted the animals.

官员推测，来自周五那场雷暴的极高强度的电流——以及闪电与水土的相互作用——让这些动物触电身亡。

“Reindeer often huddle together in groups during thunderstorms,” Knutsen said. “It is a strategy they have to survive, but in this case their survival strategy might have cost them their life. The corpses are all lying in one big group, piled together.”

“雷雨中的驯鹿常常成群地缩在一处，”克努森说。“那是它们的求生策略，但这一次，这种求生策略或许让它们付出了生命的代价。尸体全都躺成一片，堆在一起。”

Olav Strand, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, inspected the site Sunday, and said the animals appeared to have died “as if someone just turned off a switch.” The air was filled with a smell that seemed both sweet and sour, he said.

挪威自然研究院(Norwegian Institute for Nature Research)的高级研究员奥拉夫·斯特兰德(Olav Strand)周日勘查了现场，他说看上去“就好像某个人关上了开关”，然后这些动物就死掉了。空气中弥漫着一种酸甜的味道，他说。

“The lightning was fierce, the amount of water pouring down that day was incredible, and the whole group was found dead at the scene, placed as they usually are, huddled into a group, with some standing in two lines on the side and a larger congregation in the middle,” he said. “They were standing on a hill, moving up that hill. They seem to have fallen dead on the ground, exactly where they stood.”

“闪电颇为猛烈，那天的降雨量也高到惊人，整群驯鹿被发现当场死亡。它们像往常那样挤在一起，一些驯鹿在两侧排成两排，中间的则挤作一大团，”他说。“它们当时站在一座山上，正朝上方行进。它们似乎就在站立之处倒地而亡。”