Indian’s snake charmers are to be retrained as wildlife teachers under a plan to prevent their unique skills and knowledge from being lost. The charmers, who make snakes dance     1    the sound of flutes(笛子), used to be a traditional feature of Indian life, performing in towns and villages,     2     they were banned in 1972 to control the trade in snake skins.

The government is now considering a plan to train the saperas, as they are known,    3    (visit) schools and zoos to tell children about forests and wildlife. There is also a     4    (propose) to set up a “dial a snake charmer” service to help householders to deal with unwelcome intruders.

“For generations they have been a feature of Indian life but now they can’t earn a living for fear of arrest,” said Behar Dutt, a conservationist behind the plans, “if a policeman doesn’t catch them, animal rights activists report them.”

Many snake charmers     5    (continue) to work clandestinely since the ban, despite the threat of up to three years in jail. But their trademark cloth-covered baskets,     6    (hang) from a bamboo pole carried across their shoulders, make them    7    easy target for police.

The fate of Shisha Nath, 56, from Badarpur, a village just outside of Delhi, is typical of practitioners(从业者) of the     8    (die) art. “I used to earn enough to support my family and send my children to school,” he said. “Now it’s hard to earn even £1 a day. My children want to be snake charmers. It’s     9     identity. We love the work. But it s become impossible.”

Next month Dutt’s project to train 30 snake charmers will begin at a snake park in Pune, western India, where experts will enrich their home-grown skills with some formal knowledge.

More than the law, though, it is the dishonest attitude of their fellow countryman     10     angers many snake charmers.

“'We’re disturbed all the time but when people want a snake removed from the house, they rush to us,” said Prakash Nath, who was ordered recently to the home of Sonia Gandhi, the Congress party leader.

The Shanxi Hongjiannao National Nature Reserve, with the Hongjiannao Lake at its core, is located in the north of Shanxi Province. With a total area of 107. 68 square kilometers, this wetland is one of the main     1     (habitat) for Central Asian gull, a migratory bird species     2     (list) on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species.

The Central Asian gull breeds (繁殖) inland in places including Kazakhstan, Mongolia and the     3     (north) part of China, spending their winters around the Bohai Sea. In spring, they fly to desert lakes in Northwest China. However, the environment around Hongjiannao Lake worsened,     4     (cast) a shadow over the species.

In 2010, 7, 700 baby gulls were bred within a year. However, after 2012 the number of mid-lake islands     5     the gulls made their nests kept decreasing, leading to     6     number of the baby gulls dropping to 2,000. To protect the environment, the Hongjiannao Nature Reserve     7     (establish) in 2014.

So far, the Hongjiannao National Nature Reserve     8     (adopt) a series of measures to restore the ecology, like river management and water quality monitoring and control. According     9     the data obtained from China’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment, in 2017, there were only dozens of gull nests. Yet in 2019, the nests increased to 800, and in 2022     10     (far) increased to 4,700.