1 . Thanks to the 1999 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, 26 endangered species in Australia have seen their populations recover.
It seems like that we're always hearing about new animals that have become endangered, but there's some good news in Australia: 26 animal species no longer meet the criteria to be listed as threatened. Australia’s biodiversity has been in decline, with more than 1, 700 species and ecological communities known to be on the line. In 1999, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act was passed to introduce protections for endangered animals. The burrowing bettong is one of 26 Australian species that have returned from the edge of extinction.
Seemingly these are working, as a recent study published in the journal Biological Conservation reviewed the animals that were previously or currently listed as threatened between 2000 and December 2022, and discovered that 26 species had recovered to no longer meet the criteria. Species that have seen improvement include the charmingly named burrowing bettong, the golden bandicoot and the bulloo grey grasswren.
Factors behind this improvement include habitat management, control of introduced predators (捕食者) and translocation of endangered animals to predator-free islands. However, the species have not been officially delisted at this time. The EPBC Act only allows species to be delisted if doing so will not have a negative effect on their survival, and researchers believe that conservation gains could be lost should management efforts be stopped.
Dr Michelle Ward, a conservation scientist at WWF Australia, told The Guardian, “The key problem with delisting species is that then they no longer have monitoring and no longer need certain funding plans.”
However, it is promising that researchers have found signs of improvement. Hopefully this will continue among these and other species!
1. What do the underlined words “on the line” in paragraph 2 probably mean?| A．Out of place. | B．At risk. |
| C．Under control. | D．On the increase. |
| A．Some animals are facing extinction. |
| B．Burrowing bettong is a charming species. |
| C．The criteria to be delisted were hard to meet. |
| D．26 endangered species’ populations are recovering. |
| A．their living situation is severe | B．the delisting consequences are uncertain |
| C．the conservation gains are short | D．the habitat management level is poor |
| A．Unconcerned. | B．Doubtful. | C．Positive. | D．Worried. |
2 . Safe Haven for Donkeys (驴) is providing sanctuary for rescued working donkeys in the El Saf region of Egypt.
First established in 2000 to help thousands of working donkeys in Israel, the charity Safe Haven for Donkeys has begun working with an Egyptian partner organization, the Bridge Foundation, to provide care to the donkeys in the El Saf region of Egypt.
Thousands of donkeys work in the brick kilns (窑) in Egypt, carrying 1.4 to 1.6 tonnes of bricks and moving at an intense pace to prevent unfired bricks from cracking in the heat. Due to lacking expert veterinary (兽医的) care, many of these animals are suffering intense pain from harness wounds, beatings, hoof issues and parasitic diseases spread by flies.
Now the cooperation between UK charity Safe Haven for Donkeys and Egyptian community development charity the Bridge Foundation is providing much-needed relief to these animals. The project includes a mobile veterinary clinic which treats common injuries and infections and trains the owners in how to best look after their donkeys.
In a press release, Andy Foxcroft, CEO of Safe Haven for Donkeys, said, “Through our work in Israel, we came to know of millions of working animals in Egypt without critical veterinary care. They were suffering a host of preventable and treatable painful conditions. Currently. no other animal welfare charity provides veterinary interventions in these particular kilns. So the skills of this charity are needed to treat sick and injured animals and provide training for owners and local professionals (vets and farriers). The first year is vital as we hope to make a lasting impact by reducing the unnecessary suffering of working animals. which sadly, is all too common a feature in the brick kilns.”
Safe Haven for Donkeys’ work, which helps about 10,000 animals a year, is made possible by charitable donations that fund the treatment and training they offer. You can make a donation on its website.
1. What does the underlined word “sanctuary” in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Training. | B．Shelter. | C．Information. | D．Food. |
| A．The donkeys’ tough situations. | B．The donkeys’ competitive life. |
| C．The popularity of the donkeys. | D．The contributions of the donkeys. |
| A．The charity has made a lasting impact on Egypt. |
| B．The owners of the brick kilns need more support |
| C．The charity’s involvement in the affair is essential. |
| D．The workers in the brick kilns lack enough training. |
| A．To raise more funds. | B．To set up more charities. |
| C．To focus on donkeys’ work. | D．To explain animals’ treatment. |
3 . Birders get nervous when they see landscapes covered in wind turbines (涡轮机). When the wind gets going, their blades (叶片) can turn around at well over 200km per hour. It is easy to imagine careless birds getting cut into pieces and wind turbines do indeed kill at least some birds. But a new analysis of American data suggests the numbers are negligible, and have little impact on bird populations.
Erik Katovich, an economist at the University of Geneva, made use of the Christmas BirdCount, a citizen-science project run by the National Audubon Society. Volunteers count birds they spot over Christmas, and the society gathers the numbers. He assumed, reasonably, that if wind turbines harmed bird populations, the numbers seen in the Christmas Bird Count would drop in places where new turbines had been built. Combining bird population and species maps with the locations and construction dates of all wind turbines, he found building turbines had no noticeable effect on bird populations.
Instead of limiting his analysis to wind power alone, he also examined oil-and-gas extraction (开采), which has boomed in America over the past couple of decades. Comparing bird populations to the locations of new gas wells revealed an average 15% drop in bird numbers when new wells were drilled, probably due to a combination of noise, air pollution and the disturbance of rivers and ponds that many birds rely upon. When drilling happened in migration centers, feeding grounds or breeding locations, bird numbers instead dropped by 25%.
Wind power, in other words, not only produces far less planet-heating carbon dioxide and methane than do fossil fuels. It appears to be significantly less damaging to wildlife, too. Yet that is not the impression you would get from reading the news. Dr Katovich found 173 stories in major American news media reporting the supposed negative effects that wind turbines had on birds in 2020, compared with only 46 stories discussing the effects of oil-and-gas wells.
1. What does the underlined word“negligible”in paragraph 1 mean?| A．Insignificant. | B．Inaccurate. | C．Inconsistent. | D．Indefinite. |
| A．Previous studies. | B．Relevant data. |
| C．Reasonable prediction. | D．Experiment results. |
| A．Oil-and-gas extraction has expanded in America. |
| B．Birds are heavily dependent on rivers and ponds. |
| C．Many factors lead to the decline of bird populations. |
| D．Well drilling poses a serious threat to birds' survival. |
| A．Wind turbines could share the sky with wildlife. |
| B．More evidence is needed to confirm the finding. |
| C．Wind power will be substituted for fossil fuels. |
| D．Wind turbines deserve wider media coverage. |
1. What is the report about?
| A．A storm. | B．A movie. | C．A village. |
| A．14. | B．36. | C．200. |
| A．Preparing breakfast. | B．Repairing their house. | C．Looking for their children. |
| A．Calling her husband. |
| B．Taking something out. |
| C．Rushing out with her grandchildren |
5 . Manatees — often called sea cows — are an anomaly in the animal kingdom. Neither predator nor prey, these peaceable creatures, which can grow to 13 feet and weigh more than 2,000 pounds, are evolutionarily devoid of aggression. Crystal River — “Manatee Capital of the World” — is the epicenter of their presence and recovery.
Yet despite some gains, manatees still face grave threats. Three-quarters of Florida’s 22 million people live along the coast, many in prime manatee habitat, where the strain of human-presence has degraded the state’s enchanted springs, waterways, and wetlands. In Indian River Lagoon, for example, an important manatee habitat along Florida’s densely populated east coast, decades of human waste, sediment from real estate development, and fertilizers from lawns and farms have clouded the water. That has killed seagrass, manatees’ main food source there. More than a thousand manatees have died in the lagoon during the past two years.
What people don’t understand is the need to help support them in waterways. That means restoring seagrass beds and freshwater aquatic vegetation, the basis of their existence and of the overall health of Florida’s waters. Steps to reverse the damage started small. Neighbors gathered with rakes, scooping up algae by hand. Ironically, it was Save Crystal River — the group environmentalists had opposed during their fight over the manatee’s endangered status — that spearheaded the restoration of aquatic vegetation. With funding from the state government, Save Crystal River hired Sea& Shoreline, an aquatic restoration firm, to remove the waste and replant the river bottom with eelgrass, which grows long, ribbon like leaves.
While the prospect of replanting the entire river was daunting, after vacuuming more than 300 million pounds of detritus and planting some 350,000 individual eelgrass pods by hand, the groups have flipped the river back to an ecosystem no longer dominated by algae.
Instead of spending the few short winter months in Crystal River before heading back out into the Gulf of Mexico to graze, some manatees now linger here year-round, enjoying fat times. Aerial surveys from January 2022 revealed the highest number of manatees ever recorded in these waters — more than a thousand in Kings Bay alone.
1. What is a feature of manatees?| A．They are gentle animals. | B．They feed on small creatures. |
| C．They are slightly aggressive. | D．They look cute for their shape. |
| A．Climate change. | B．Habitat loss. |
| C．Low food supply. | D．Human activities. |
| A．By removing wastes from the river. |
| B．By raising funds from the government. |
| C．By replanting algae in the river bottom. |
| D．By refining manatees’ living surroundings. |
| A．They enjoy the cold winter of Mexico. |
| B．They remain in Manatee Capital for long. |
| C．They head towards the warmer waters during winter. |
| D．They have the largest population ever recorded globally. |
1. How does the woman deal with her old clothes?
| A．By throwing them as waste. |
| B．By donating them to a charity. |
| C．By putting them into the recycling box. |
| A．He likes to buy big furniture. |
| B．He often buys second-hand furniture. |
| C．His sofa has been changed three times. |
| A．The previous one was out of date. |
| B．The previous one was damaged by the lightening. |
| C．The previous one was destroyed by her children. |
| A．Surprised. | B．Annoyed. | C．Satisfied. |
This newly opened smart museum has
As the highlight of the museum, the core exhibition showcases over 1,000 cultural relics
8 . When lightning caused fires around California’s Big Basin Redwoods State Park north of Santa Cruz in August 2020, the fire spread quickly. Mild fires strike coastal redwood (红杉) forests about every decade. The giant trees resist burning thanks to the bark (树皮), up to about 30 centimetres thick at the base, which contains acids. Their branches and needles are normally beyond the reach of flames. But this time flames shot through the top of 100-metre-tall trees, burning the needles. “It was shocking,” says Drew Peltier, a tree expert at Northern Arizona University. “It really seemed like most of the trees were going to die.”
Yet many of them lived. In a paper published yesterday in Nature Plants, Peltier and his colleagues help explain why: The survivors use long-held energy reserves—sugars that had been made from sunlight decades earlier—and poured them into buds (芽) that had been lying dormant (休眠的) under the bar k for centuries.
“This is one of those papers that challenges our previous knowledge on tree growth,” says Adrian Rocha, an ecosystem ecologist at the University of Notre Dame. “It is amazing to learn that carbon taken up decades ago can be used to sustain its growth into the future.” The findings suggest redwoods have the tools to cope with big fires driven by climate change, Rocha says. Still, it’s unclear whether the trees could cope with the regular infernos that might occur under a warmer climate environment.
The fire in 2020 was so intense that even the top branches of many trees burned and their ability to photosynthesize (光合作用) went up in smoke along with their pine needles. Trees photosynthesize to create sugars and other carbohydrates (碳水化合物), which provide the energy they need to grow and repair tissue. Trees do store some of this energy, which they can call on during a drought or after a fire. Although the redwoods have sprouted (长出) new growth, Peltier and other forest experts wonder how the trees will cope with far less energy from photosynthesis, given that it will be years before they grow as many needles as they had before the fire. “They’re alive, but I would be a little concerned for them in the future.”
1. What’s special about this big fire for coastal redwood forests in 2020?| A．It burnt the top of the trees. | B．It was very close to the last fire. |
| C．It resisted burning effectively. | D．It caused relatively minor damage. |
| A．Sugars protected their barks. | B．Energy reserves promoted the growth of buds. |
| C．They got used to hot climate. | D．They took in much carbon to resist fire. |
| A．Unpredictable disasters. | B．Changeable climate. |
| C．Terrible environment. | D．Uncontrollable fires. |
| A．Their tissues can’t be repaired. | B．They can’t save energy anymore. |
| C．Their energy saved is not sufficient. | D．They grow too slowly. |
9 . It’s not easy to swim 109 miles when you’re starving to death. It’s not easy either to try to survive when you’re losing body weight at a rate of 2. 2 lb. a day. And it might be the hardest of all if you’re a nursing mom and your calorie intake has dropped so low that you can no longer produce the milk you need to care for your young.
As a newspaper in Nature Communications reveals, all of those challenges and more are facing the world’s polar bears, thanks to disappearing sea ice in our warming world, denying the animals a platform that they need to hunt for seals. If the trend isn’t reversed (扭转) soon, the estimated 26, 000 polar bears in the wild could start to lose their hold on survival before the middle of this century.
The researchers followed 20 different polar bears in Manitoba, Canada, from 2019 to 2022, fitting them with GPS trackers and video collars and periodically tranquilizing(麻醉) them to analyzes their blood, body mass, and daily energy consumption.
“The polar bears in Hudson Bay are probably at the edge of the range at which they can survive right now,” says Anthony Pagano, a research biologist with the U. S. Geological Surrey and the lead author of the paper. “Most of the modeling work suggests that around 2050, they are going to be on land and away from their primary habitat on the ice.”
According to the study, the data gathered was troubling. Weight loss varied among bears, with the daily loss of 2. 2 1b. representing an average; some of the subjects dropped up to 3. 75 lb. every 24 hours.
The bears are efficient hunters when they’ve got the purchase of ice beneath them, but they are clumsy when they are going after seals and trying to swim at the same time.
That leaves them searching on land for foods they would not ordinarily eat and getting little payoff for their efforts. Polar bears are feeding on ducks, geese, and eggs. Other foods on the desperate bears’ menus include berries and other vegetation. None of that food is as calorie-rich as seals.
1. What’s the function of the first paragraph?| A．To make a prediction. | B．To introduce the topic of the text. |
| C．To describe the greatness of mother bears. | D．To offer some advice on saving the bears. |
| A．By observing them in the wild. | B．By analyzing their blood samples. |
| C．By copying their living environment. | D．By tracking them with GPS and video collars. |
| A．They will adapt well to the changing environment. |
| B．They will develop to become better hunters on land. |
| C．They will move to other areas with more suitable habitats. |
| D．They will struggle to survive due to the loss of their habitat. |
| A．The challenges faced by polar bears. | B．The future of polar bears in the wild. |
| C．The methods used to study polar bears. | D．The importance of protecting polar bears. |
10 . The impact of fast fashion on the environment is significant. Recently Zara, one of the largest fast-fashion retailers (零售商) in the world, put forth a concept that only sustainable fabrics are used in clothing production. But how can Zara ever be sustainable? They produce around 450 million garments (衣服) a year and release 500 new designs a week, about 20,000 a year. Zara’s fast-fashion model has been so successful it has inspired an entire industry to follow them.
Clothing production doubled from 2012 to 2022. The average consumer bought 60 percent more clothing in 2022 than in 2012, but kept each garment half as long. And less than one percent of all clothing produced globally is recycled.
I spend a lot of time reading the corporate social responsibility reports of large brands and interviewing micro-to-small sized enterprises to see how they approach sustainability. The largest significant difference between them is culture.
Small brands focus on creating a culture of sustainability by using strategies like producing made-to-order, so they are not making more than what is sold. Most small brands are opting to work under, an “anti-fashion calendar”. They choose not to follow the intense seasonal calendar that fashion functions under. They do this because waste is one of their biggest concerns. They also design clothing to be of the highest quality, ensuring durability and longevity, so you may keep it longer.
Fast fashion is a “grow or die” business, and the fast-fashion growth model used by all large companies is predicated on limitless growth. Large global corporate retailers are not seeking to change their fundamental business model or create cultures of sustainability. That would require re-working their entire business structure and ultimately hurt their bottom line.
I would start to believe Zara and other large fashion brands had good intentions to fight climate change if they started to look at how to move away from their continuous offerings of weekly new products. They need to introduce alternative sustainable business model practices. One small step could be to offer repair or tailoring services. Tailoring creates clothes that fit perfectly, subsequently increasing their emotional value, so that we love them and keep them longer.
1. What does the author intend to show with the numbers about Zara in paragraph 1?| A．Zara is not eco-friendly. | B．Zara is popular with consumers. |
| C．Zara is a large fast-fashion retailer. | D．Zara is a success in fashion industry. |
| A．Designing clothing as needed. | B．Designing clothing seasonably. |
| C．Producing clothing as needed. | D．Producing clothing seasonably. |
| A．The fast-fashion retailers. | B．The profits from fast fashion. |
| C．The culture of sustainability. | D．The relationship with consumers. |
| A．How to make consumers love their clothes. |
| B．How to make consumers buy less clothing. |
| C．How large fashion brands offer weekly new products. |
| D．How large fashion brands improve their services. |
