| A．Their dog. | B．Their house. | C．A storm. |
| A．Snowy. | B．Cloudy. | C．Clear. |
3 . Amazing Facts About Elf Owls
Brief Introduction
The elf owl (a kind of owl) is mostly found in the southwestern parts of the United States and Mexico. During the spring and summer seasons, it moves to Arizona and New Mexico. It returns to Mexico for the winter. The elf owl doesn’t build its nest. It lives in tree holes.
Features
The elf owl is a yellow bird. Its wings are dark and about .48-61 centimeters long. Its eyes are bright yellow. Its feet are large. It is the smallest owl of the species. It is about 12.5-14.5 centimeters long. It is also the world’s lightest owl, weighing not more than 40 grams. In general, female elf owls weigh more than male ones.
The female usually lays three eggs at a time. After the young elf owls are born，their mothe
r will feed them with worms(蠕虫) for up to 3-4 weeks. After 10 weeks, the young ones are fully grown and ready to take flight.
Living Habits
The elf owls are not aggressive birds. When danger comes, they will fly away in the other direction, rather than stay and fact the danger or the enemies. Besides flying，the elf owl can also walk and climb like a parrot. The elf owl is most active after dusk，during the night, and just before dawn. It can produce many different kinds of sounds. It can live for 3-6 years in the wild. If they are kept in cages, they can live for 10-14 years. The elf owls are now in danger because of the loss of habitat. Cutting down trees will result in lack of places for them to live in.
1. According to the first and second paragraphs, an elf owl may _________ .| A．build its nest in trees | B．have yellow wings |
| C．have big and dark eyes | D．live in Mexico in winter |
| A．The female elf owl takes care of her children for about four weeks. |
| B．The elf owl sleeps at night and looks for food during the daytime. |
| C．The female elf owl lays one egg at one time. |
| D．The elf owl can live no longer than six years. |
| A．Shy. | B．Peace-loving. |
| C．Hard-working. | D．Selfish. |
| A．Cool. | B．Warm. | C．Hot. |
| A．Rainy. | B．Windy. | C．Sunny. |
| A．It’s raining. | B．It’s cloudy. | C．It’s sunny. |
7 . Twenty-four trains, nine countries, 13, 500 miles. They are the numbers behind the heroic round trip one man took from Southampton in the UK to eastern China.
Roger Tyers, 37, used over $2, 500, which was almost twice more than the cost of a return flight, to travel to the Chinese port city Ningbo for academic research in May, 2019. The man spent a month on board 15 trains during the first leg of his round trip. It was the climate crisis, not a love of trains, that drove the sociologist to choose this complicated route over a return flight. He stopped flying when UN climate experts warned that the world had less than 11 years to avoid terrible levels of global warming. Tyers calculated that his train journey to China produced almost 90% less emissions than a return flight.
Tyers is not the only person to avoid air travel in response to climate change. Thousands of people worldwide have publicly promised to stop flying. Activist Maja Rosen launched the “Flight Free” campaign in Sweden with the goal of encouraging 100,000 people not to fly for one year. Although only around 14,000 people signed the online “#flightfree2019” pledge (保证), Rosen, who stopped flying 12 years ago, says that the campaign had made more people worry about the climate crisis and aware of harm of travel by air and motivated them to try new ways of travelling.
According to a survey released in May 2019 by Swedish Railways (SJ), 37% of respondents chose to travel by train instead of by plane where possible, compared to 20% at the start of 2018. An SJ spokesperson said: “Rail travel has been augmented due to the worries.” Domestic passenger numbers in July fell by 12% compared to the previous year, according to Swedavia, a company which operates Sweden’s 10 busiest Airports.
“The collective pledge helps fight the sense of hopelessness many people feel when it comes to tackling climate change”, Rosen said. “One of the problems is that people feel there’s no point in what you do as an individual. The campaign is about making people aware that if we do this together, we can actually bring changes.”
In which section of a newspaper may this text appear?| A．Travel. |
| B．Environment. |
| C．Education. |
| D．Lifestyle. |
8 . Grizzly bears, which may grow to about 2.5 m long and weigh over 400 kg, occupy a conflicted corner of the American psyche — we revere (敬畏) them even as they give us frightening dreams. Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone National Park what they most hope to see, and their answer is often the same: a grizzly bear.
“Grizzly bears are re-occupying large areas of their former range,” says bear biologist Chris Servheen. As grizzly bears expand their range into places where they haven’t been seen in a century or more, they’re increasingly being sighted by humans.
The western half of the US was full of grizzlies when Europeans came, with a rough number of 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans. By the early 1970s, after centuries of cruel and continuous hunting by settlers, 600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the Northern Rockies. In 1975, grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act.
Today, there are about 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the US. Their recovery has been so successful that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has twice attempted to delist grizzlies, which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted. Both efforts were overturned due to lawsuits from conservation groups. For now, grizzlies remain listed.
Obviously, if precautions (预防) aren’t taken, grizzlies can become troublesome, sometimes killing farm animals or walking through yards in search of food. If people remove food and attractants from their yards and campsites, grizzlies will typically pass by without trouble. Putting electric fencing around chicken houses and other farm animal quarters is also highly effective at getting grizzlies away. “Our hope is to have a clean, attractant-free place where bears can pass through without learning bad habits,” says James Jonkel, longtime biologist who manages bears in and around Missoula.
What has stopped the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service from delisting grizzlies?
| A．The opposition of conservation groups. |
| B．The successful comeback of grizzlies. |
| C．The voice of the biologists. |
| D．The local farmers’ advocates. |
9 . Right at this moment, cockroaches (蟑螂) are doing more to save the environment than you are. A big overstatement? Not if you’ve ever thrown away leftovers from your plate or bought more food than you could manage to cook in a week. You’re part of the food waste problem. But just like cockroaches, you can also be part of the solution.
For example, some farmers in Asia and Africa collect tomatoes in big bags, which means that many of them get crushed out of shape and spoiled before they can be sold or eaten. Switching the bags for large wooden containers already lowers the amount of food lost. Similar successes can and have been achieved in various regions with weather-protected storage facilities.
Let’s focus on China for a second. It’s one of the few countries with an innovative approach to minimizing the environmental impact of food waste. How does it do it? Cockroaches. Millions of the tiny creatures are kept in farms in the suburban districts of big cities. Every morning, food waste is delivered by the tonnes and fed to the cockroaches. Just like tiny pigs, they’re not picky and devour everything quickly. After they die, they’re processed into protein-rich feed for animals such as cows or sheep, or used for cosmetic products and Chinese medicine. It’s an efficient and environmentally-friendly alternative to dumping leftover food in a landfill. Cockroaches aren’t going to solve the problem with food waste, but they can serve as an inspiration for finding other similar solutions on a wider scale.
To avoid food waste completely, improvements are needed at every step of the food supply chain, from production to retail. These take time and are often out of your hands as a consumer. But a meaningful reduction of food waste is definitely in your hands. You can not only buy less and shop more often, but also cut down on animal products.
What do we know about the practice of raising cockroaches in paragraph 3?| A．It is widely used around the world. |
| B．It solves the problem with food waste. |
| C．It lessens the environmental impact of pigs. |
| D．It inspires people to seek creative solutions. |
10 . When the explorers first set foot upon the continent of North America, the skies and lands were alive with an astonishing variety of wildlife. Native Americans had taken care of these precious natural resources wisely. Unfortunately, it took the explorers and the settlers who followed only a few decades to decimate a large part of these resources. Millions of waterfowl (水禽) were killed at the hands of market hunters and a handful of overly ambitious sportsmen. Millions of acres of wetlands were dried to feed and house the ever-increasing populations, greatly reducing waterfowl habitat.
In 1934, with the passage of the Migratory Bird Hunting Stamp Act (Act), an increasingly concerned nation took firm action to stop the destruction of migratory (迁徙的) waterfowl and the wetlands so vital to their survival. Under this Act, all waterfowl hunters 16 years of age and over must annually purchase and carry a Federal Duck Stamp. The very first Federal Duck Stamp was designed by J.N. “Ding” Darling, a political cartoonist from Des Moines, lowa, who at that time was appointed by President Franklin Roosevelt as Director of the Bureau of Biological Survey. Hunters willingly pay the stamp price to ensure the survival of our natural resources.
About 98 cents of every duck stamp dollar goes directly into the Migratory Bird Conservation Fund to purchase wetlands and wildlife habitat for inclusion into the National Wildlife Refuge System — a fact that ensures this land will be protected and available for all generations to come. Since 1934, better than half a billion dollars has gone into that Fund to purchase more than 5 million acres of habitat. Little wonder the Federal Duck Stamp Program has been called one of the most successful conservation programs ever initiated.
What was a cause of the waterfowl population decline in North America?
| A．Loss of wetlands. |
| B．Popularity of water sports. |
| C．Pollution of rivers. |
| D．Arrival of other wild animals. |
