【推荐1】Wind can do a lot

Wind is useful for people. The early ships went across the sea with the help of wind. Wind also makes machines run. People in Iran started to use windmills (风车) to get water from rivers in the seventh century. Today, very big windmills make electricity. A large windmill can make enough electricity for a small town. Windmills are clean but they are big and noisy.

Cooking with fire

Before there were stoves (炉子), people cooked over open fires. In the 1600s, people found that open fires were dangerous and made a lot of smoke. They started to think about using fire in a better way. Chinese and Japanese closed their stoves much earlier. From the Qin Dynasty(221-206 BC), people knew how to cover fires. They put wood through a hole in the front of stoves and cooked food in pots (锅) over the fire.

【推荐2】

“When a snow leopard walks to its prey (猎物) among the mountain walls, it moves...softly, slowly,” explains a scientist. “If it knocks a stone loose, it will reach out a foot to stop it from falling and making noise.” One might be moving silently right now, maybe close by. But where?

The snow leopard is one of the world’s most special animals. People can only find them in the mountainous areas of Central Asia.

Snow leopards have been protected since 1975, but it has been not easy to do that. Many people kill them for their fur and body parts to sell on the black market. When snow leopards hunt (狩猎) at night, they may kill the animals of herders (牧民). So in recent years, conflict (冲突) with local herders has also led to a number of snow leopard deaths .

As a result, the actual number of snow leopards may already have dropped below 3,500. The only way to change this, say conservationists (自然保护主义者), is to make them more valuable alive than dead.

To solve this problem, local government has called for an end to snow leopard killings. They’ve also tried to make people realize that the leopards are endangered, and it is important to protect them. Some officials are also helping to slow snow leopard killings. An organization (组织) has set up Himalayan Homestays, a program that sends visitors to herders’ houses. Visitors pay about ten dollars a night. So herders can earn enough money to make up for the lost because of snow leopards. It also provides herders with environmental classes at village schools, and trains them as nature guides. In exchange, the herders agree not to kill snow leopards.

In Mongolia, a project called SLE helps herders earn extra money to stop them from killing the endangered cat. SLE buys hand-made things from herding families and sells them abroad. However, herders must agree to protect the snow leopards and to encourage neighbors to do the same.

Projects like the Homestays program and SLE’s business are doing well. They make the leopards more valuable to more people each year. If these programs continue to do well, the snow leopard may just have a fighting chance.