1 . Nature is like the mechanism in an enormous clock. Everything is neatly arranged and inter connected. Every individual has its place and its function. Take the wolf for example. As meat-eaters, wolves regulate the number of plant eaters so that they do not multiply too rapidly. All animals and plants are held in a delicate balance.
The wolves remind me of a story from my childhood when my grandfather gave me an old clock. The first thing I did was take the clock apart to find out how it worked. Even though I was convinced that I knew how to put it back together in working order, I couldn’t do it. After I rebuilt it, there were a few cogs (轮齿) left over and a grandfather who was not in the best of moods. In the wild, wolves play the role of such cogs. If we remove them, not only do the enemies of sheep and cattle disappear, but the mechanism of nature also begins to run differently, so differently that rivers change course and many local bird species die out.
And things can also go wrong when a species is added. For example, the introduction of a nonnative fish leads to a massive reduction in the local deer population. Because of a fish? The earth’s ecosystems, it seems, are a bit too complex for us to draw up simple rules of cause and effect. Even conservation measures can have unexpected results. Who knew, for example, that recovering crane (鹤) populations in Europe would affect the production of Iberian ham?
So it’s high time we took a good look at the interconnections between species both large and small. It’s important for us to realize that even small interventions(介入)can have huge consequences, and we’d do better to keep our hands off everything in nature that we do not absolutely have to touch.
1. What does the underlined word “regulate” mean in paragraph1?| A．Control. | B．Count. | C．Record. | D．Increase. |
| A．Curiosity kills the cat. | B．Grandfather’s love lasts. |
| C．Clocks are complex. | D．Every part counts. |
| A．Local species die out due to the nonnative one. |
| B．Rules of cause and effect are obvious in nature. |
| C．The interconnections in nature are complicated. |
| D．Conservation projects are too hard to complete. |
| A．Show mercy to small animals. | B．Stay away from conservation. |
| C．Take a new look at meat-eaters. | D．Think twice before stepping in. |
“Jane! Look who I brought home!” My father stuck his head out from behind the door, flashing a big smile. My heart skipped a beat as I mouthed, “A dog?” Nodding, my father pushed the door open, revealing a large German Shepherd. I grasped my hands tightly over my mouth and failed to hold back a sharp scream. Rushing back into my room, I locked the door and covered the gap between it and the floor with tape. I had a strong fear and great hate of dogs ever since I was bitten by one badly on the face, leaving a huge and deep scar(伤疤). I decided to stay in my room until the dog had gone for a walk with my father.
After what seemed like ages, I heard the door open and shut. “Finally! I can get out of here,” I thought. Out of great joy, I threw open the door and punched(用拳猛击) the air. At that moment, I felt something wet touching my foot. To my shock, it was the dog! I stood there, scared and shocked as if my feet were rooted to the ground. When I regained my calmness, I shouted loudly, “Ahhh! It is the dog! Help! He wants to bite me! Get him away from me!”
My father was standing at the door, folding his arms and laughing quietly. “He is not going to eat you! Jane, don’t be so scared. Go on! Touch him!” he said. Attempting to show my unwillingness, I failed to do so due to my constant and uncontrollable shaking. Instead, I shouted loudly, “Never! I will never touch that dirty thing! Go away!” I picked up a tennis ball on the table and aimed at the dog but missed, causing the ball to roll across the living room.
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The dog barked excitedly before running across the room to fetch the ball and bring it back to me.
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The following day, gathering my courage, I decided to follow my father when he took the dog out for a walk.
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3 . Journalist John Smith says that so many scientists visit Yellowstone National Park — close to 4 million a year — that it’s stressing the park’s ecosystem. But, he adds, the development of private lands around the park is an even greater threat.
“People come to buy a small farm of 300 acres, and they build a house, get a road and a satellite dish. They turn what was wild landscape into human-occupied landscape,” Smith says. “And that’s problematic for the elk that move through these corridors.
The elk of Yellowstone National Park spend their summer in the high country of Yellowstone, feeding on high grass that remain green through the summer, but in the winter, those high places become very cold, and so the elk move down to lower places in the surrounding land onto national forests and in some cases onto large private ranches.
If those private lands are transformed from open land into small farms, to shopping malls, to roads, to Starbucks, if those places are all settled for the benefit of humans, then the elk are not going to be able to move in and out of Yellowstone National Park any more. And if the elk can’t move into the park, then that creates problems for the wolves and a lot of other creatures. The elk are the most abundant large herbivores in the Yellowstone ecosystem. Those moving routes need to stay open.
Smith notes that Yellowstone National Park is just one part of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, a 22 million-acre area that also includes Grand Teton National Park, a portion of the Wind River Indian Reservation and other private and federally owned lands. Because the animals in Yellowstone need to move outside the park in the winter, the lands in the greater ecosystem play an important role in the park’s continued existence.
“It has been realized in recent decades that Yellowstone National Park is not an island,” Smith says. “It’s part of this larger system, this larger body of wild landscape, and it needs the rest of this wild landscape just as the rest of the wild landscape needs it.”
1. What is John Smith worried about concerning Yellowstone National Park?| A．There are few corridors in it. | B．It doesn’t get enough visitors. |
| C．Part of the land in the park is over-developed. | D．The private lands around it are being developed. |
| A．They stay in the park. | B．They eat high grass. |
| C．They move to lower places. | D．They leave big private ranches. |
| A．The elk’s natural enemies. | B．The elk’s living environment. |
| C．How to protect the elk from other animals. | D．Why the moving routes shouldn’t be developed. |
| A．The park needs more land. | B．The park is similar to an island. |
| C．The park depends on the lands around it. | D．The park includes a large wild landscape. |
4 . In Song of the Whale, an installation at the Yukon Arts Centre, Joyce Majiski shared the story of a one-year old humpback whale(座头鲸) who died after she was caught in a fishery rope.
In the centre of the show is an eight-metre-long model of the baby whale’s skeleton(骨架), each bone carved(雕刻) from Styrofoam(聚苯乙烯泡塑料) collected from the ocean and beaches.
“Water is the one thing that connects us all --–we’re a planet of water---and we have a lot of disrespect for it.”
“There are a lot of things that we have done to contribute to the death of these creatures. Again, we need to pay attention to what we’re doing. If we thought about how connected we are as creatures on this planet, maybe we’d do things a little differently,” Majiski said.
Speaking of starting to set up the project, she describes it as “despairing.” Eventually, the search for an intact(完无缺的) whale skeleton that would allow the study of individual bones led her to Salt Spring Island. There, Majiski studied each bone of the young humpback whale, first in sketch (素描) form and then by carving models from collected Styrofoam.
The majority of the Styrofoam came from the Ocean Legacy Foundation, a non-profit that does ocean cleanups. The organisation says over 6.5 million tons of rubbish enter the world’s ocean each year. When degrading (降解) in the ocean, Styrofoam breaks down into small particles that can be eaten by ocean animals.
It is also messy material to work with as an artist.
"The Styrofoam looks really awful. It’s all big pieces that are black and crumbly(易碎的). They’ve been floating around in the ocean and degrading and washed up on shore.
“It’s really dirty and crumbly and I didn’t want to breathe any in as I carved. I mean, I wore a mask all the time and coveralls and gloves. I was cleaning myself and everything every hour or so depending on how much I was carving,” said Maiiski.
In total, Majiski carved 177 pieces.
1. What is Majiski’s purpose in holding the show?| A．To get people to think about ocean pollution. |
| B．To show the artistic attraction of carving. |
| C．To call on people to reduce fish catches. |
| D．To encourage the recycling of waste. |
| A．To spend a holiday. |
| B．To study where whales are found. |
| C．To look for a suitable whale skeleton. |
| D．To raise money for animal protection. |
| A．Styrofoam. | B．The baby whale. |
| C．Working with plastics. | D．Carving the whale s skeleton. |
| A．It was quick and smooth. | B．It was slow but interesting. |
| C．It was boring and depressing. | D．It was difficult but meaningful. |
