On October 5th, Katmai National Park &. Preserve in southern Alaska kicked off Fat Bear Week, when the park’s brown bears competing against each other in a challenge much like college basketball’s March Madness tournament. Fans use before and after     1    (photo) to vote for the bear they think has gained the most weight over summer    2     (prepare) for hibernation (冬眠). But     3    began as a contest for conservationists has become a global campaign where superfans stump for (大肆宣传) their favourite bear to be voted the     4    (fat) of them all.

Fat Bear Week began in 2014 as Fat Bear Tuesday. Mike Fitz, a former park worker at Katmai, noticed that live cameras     5    (show) the bears generated a lot of online comments. He and the other workers let people vote for their favourite fat bear on Facebook. The one-day event     6     (attract) just 1, 700 votes in 2014. Last year’s week-long contest collected nearly 800, 000. Fans gather together     7     (happy) to watch the live bear cameras setup around the park. Some go further. Jean Gross is hosting a bear-themed party where she lives in Northern Michigan. Guests must bring foods that appeal     8     both bears and humans, such as salmon patties and honey butter. This year Ms Gross says she is rooting for Holly,     9     older female, because “she is a nice little fat girl     10    so am I”.

A third country has announced some good news for rhinos (犀牛) this year. The population of this endangered one-homed animal in Nepal     1     (increase) by 16% in the past five years.     2     current number is estimated to stand at 752 individuals up from 645 in 2016. In the 1960s there were only around 100 rhinos     3     (live) in the country.

Rhinos     4     (count) across the country between March 22 and April 10. The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation used 57 elephants in their search     5     rhinos along with 350 trained personnel who swept the jungle areas, attempting     6     (record) the number of rhinos. During the process, they also collected data on habitat conditions and human activities in the region.

The overall     7     (grow) in population size is the result of ongoing protection and habitat management efforts by authorities, despite     8     (challenge) situations these past years. This achievement is a turning point in Nepal’s conservation journey. Meanwhile, in Africa, 2020 was a remarkable year for rhino protection in Kenya,     9     not one single rhino lost its horn or its life in the year. And in South Africa, 2020 was the     10     (five) year in a row that rhino poaching incidents dropped in the massive Kruger National Park.

An ecologist climbs trees in Yunnan     1     (understand) the forest canopy. The ecologist knows his way around the forest in Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Southwest China’s Yunnan province.

But it’s only half of the battle to get to the top. “I normally stay up there for about half an hour, observing insects and collecting leaves to see how many leaves     2    (eat) by insects," he says. It’s part of his research into the forest canopy,     3     refers to the upper vegetation in an area, generally     4    (form) by tree crowns. Different from the forest ground that is dark and humid, the canopies are more open and exposed     5     sunlight. “It plays an essential role in     6     (help) us obtain a clear picture of the functioning of forest ecosystems.”

The forest     7     (become) a home away from home for him already.     8     Nakamura’s focus has been on insect     9     (diverse) on the canopies, he also stops to check insects on the ground where he goes.

In 2013, Nakamura accepted an invitation from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden after he finished his postdoctoral studies in ecology at Griffith University in Australia. It boasts one of the     10     (large) collections of outdoor plants in the world, which makes it an ideal place for.

It was a cold February day. Dangwen and his wildlife monitoring team patrolled (巡逻)along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. That day, they     1     (meet) 220 blue sheep and five white-lipped deer. Through the camera, they found a mother and two baby leopards (豹) — and the babies had grown much     2     (big) than three months earlier.

Dangwen comes from Yunta, a village located in Sanjiangyuan, Qinghai Province on the Tibetan Plateau. Sanjiangyuan serves as an important habitat     3     rich and unique species.

Dangwen is neither officially a researcher     4     an activist. But he has taken upon himself the task of monitoring local wildlife with a team of other villagers, as part of a conservation project driven by the Shanshui Conservation Center,     5     Beijing-based non-governmental organization. When the organization brought up the idea of     6     (organize) villagers to watch over wildlife and protect their lands, Dangwen volunteered     7     (immediate). Having grown up in the village, he knows very well the land, the river and the wildlife, and he is especially proud of the sacred mountains     8     are around all of them. This is the fourth year that Yunta villagers have carried out this monitoring, patrolled the village to identify poachers (偷猎者), and managed rubbish     9     (keep) the land and rivers clean.

Monitoring data shows that local wildlife     10     (population), including snow leopards, are increasing.