1 . For most of human history, people raised crops and livestock to feed their households rather than to sell them for profit. This began to shift after the Industrial Revolution, which saw the rise of plantation farming.

Industrial farming not only increased the crop-growing areas, but changed the techniques used by farmers. Instead of switching the crops that were grown on a field each year, entire plantations would be devoted to a single crop. This approach and intensive modes of farming led to destruction of local biodiversity and land worsening — within years, fields would cease to produce crops.

Plantations of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were a “get rich quick plan” rather than a long-term investment. Once a field became unusable, plantation owners would simply move on to new land. Up to the end of the 19th century, wide areas of our planet were still not claimed by global modernity. But today, while we are quickly running out of vegetative (覆盖植被的) land, this mindset continues. “Farmers still hold the view that land is cheap and limitless,” said Crystal Davis from the World Resources Institute. “Most of them just cut down more trees, when new land is needed.”

“To meet our ecological goals, we need to stop turning natural ecosystems to farmland,” Davis said. “We can achieve this in part by bringing back the land’s ecological wholeness and productivity.”

Davis points to the 20×20 initiative (倡议), which has seen 18 South American and Caribbean countries commit to recovering 50m hectares of land by 2030. It includes a number of projects aimed at introducing agroforestry (混农林业) practices to cocoa and coffee farms in Colombia and Nicaragua. There farmers are encouraged to grow crops while introducing more trees to their land.

The natural beauty of Fanjingshan ensures its place among the country’s top nature reserves.

Flowers are coming out pretty at    1    foot of Fanjingshan in early April, while white snow is still attached to the mountaintop.    2    (it)green and fresh vegetation(植被)is a major feature of Fanjingshan,    3    stands northeast of Tongren city in southwestern China’s Guizhou province. Fanjingshan is home to more than 7,100 species of wild plants and animals. There are more than 40 different    4    (type)of forests as well as endangered animals.

The Fanjingshan National Nature Reserve was established in 1978. It    5    (recognize)as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1986. The reserve covers an area    6    more than 77,500 hectares and was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2018.

To protect biological activity more    7    (effective), the Fanjingshan administration has set up observation stations and put in    8    (monitor)equipment. Experts say Fanjingshan has an advantage in its application to become a    9    (nation)park in that it is the only natural habitat for the Guizhou snub-nosed monkey and the Fanjingshan fir, both of which have been rated as    10    (threaten)species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

3 . In the three decades since Darah Lady’s grandmother first arrived in this distant area of northern Brazil, clearing the forest by hand to build a house for her 14 children, the family has pushed deeper and deeper into the Amazon. It has been driven by a saying that good fortune comes when nature gives in to human control.

Yet their growing community there could ruin not only their children’s future but also that of the entire planet. More global pandemics (流行病) are on the way, scientists say, and the next one is likely to crop up from a community like Darah Lady’s, where people are taking up more and more space of the natural world and erasing the buffer zone (缓冲区) between themselves and habitats that existed long. As people cut down forest, they not only speed up the global warming but also greatly increase their risk of exposure to disease.

Scientists also say disease hot zones are expanding from Africa to South America, and that deforestation has already led to a rise in spreading disease. Zoologists have found that a third of all known disease outbreaks around the world were due to rapid land use change.

Darah Lady’s community of Maruaga is filled with risks for the spread of viruses (病毒). Their family has already battled zoonotic illnesses — the term used to describe diseases spread between animalsand humans.

When 40% of a land area has been destroyed, according to Tom Gillespie, a university researcher, the region hits a sort of tipping point: Wild animals are pushed closer to humans for food, and viruses begin to spread.

Darah Lady seemed to notice the slight dfference of deforestation. “I get kind of sad,” Darah Lady said, “Because the forest is something I’ve loved since I was little. And they are deforesting, right? It’s destroying nature.”

6 . Many pet owners desire to talk with their animals. After all, if pets were able to talk, people could take care of them more easily and have closer emotional connections to them, so a number of companies are working on devices and apps that could help understand what animals have to say.

One such app is called MeowTalk.     1     For example, one type of sound might mean “feed me” while another could be translated “let me outside.” The app can use machine learning to assess its translations and improve at identifying one particular cat’s vocalizations.    2    

For dogs, a Japanese company called Inupathy has developed a harness (系带) with a heart rate monitor to record dogs’ heart rate and thus assess dogs’ emotional state.     3    

The harness also has a light that turns red when the dog is excited, but when the dog is relaxed, the light is blue.

The most obvious application of this technology is to help pet owners empathize (共情) with and provide for their pets better.     4     There are other uses for technology that help us understand animals. For example, some sheep farmers are using artificial intelligence to scan animals’ faces and determine if they are in pain, which helps them identify sick animals.     5    

Anyone who interacts regularly with animals could benefit from understanding their animals better. Thus these technological developments might transform the way we interact with the creatures around us. Maybe in the near future, we can interact with our furry friends more effectively.

8 . Each year, as many as one billion birds are killed in the US from collisions (相撞) with glass windows and buildings every year. Birds that crashed into Philadelphia buildings began to be collected in the 1890s. Nearly 100 species of birds are known to have died out from crashes with buildings and other structures in Philadelphia. Many other species are probably affected in the city.

Called Lights Out Philly, the voluntary program in Philadelphia encourages buildings to turn out or dim unnecessary external and internal lights between midnight and six o’clock early in the morning to protect birds as they pass through during migration seasons.

Bird migration seasons are from April l to May 31 in spring and from August 15 to November 15 in fall. Each year, millions of birds pass through Philadelphia along a migration route known as the Atlantic Flyway. Bird-glass crashes are very common for migrating birds, most of which travel at night. Glass is difficult for them to recognize as hard surfaces, and artificial light can fool them into crashing with buildings and outdoor structures. Turning off lights between midnight and sunrise helps minimize the effect of artificial light when most birds are migrating.

On Oct. 2, 2020, a stormy and foggy day, Philadelphia had its largest mass collision event in more than 70 years with an estimated 1,000 birds crashing with buildings in one 3.5-square block area in just one day. Paired with a terrible storm of weather and fog conditions, the bright city and building lights attracted and confused the migrating birds, causing them to crash with buildings and outdoor structures.

Even if you don’t play a part in managing the lights of a big building, you can help birds avoid crashes by making the glass opaque to reduce the amount and intensity of artificial light at night, changing the color of lighting to blue or green, shortening the duration lights are on, directing the lighting downward or screening lighting.

With high yield and superior quality, Chinese hybrid rice varieties have been introduced around the world,     1     (benefit) more people. The export of China’s hybrid rice technology started many years ago. In 1979, China provided hybrid rice seeds to another country for the first time, and 40 years later, in     2     (real), China’s hybrid rice has been planted in dozens of countries in the world.

In the past 40 years, Chinese scientists     3     (devote) to providing assistance to many other countries. China has trained more than 14,000 hybrid rice professionals for more than 80 developing countries through international training courses. This technology has spread     4     more and more places in the world so far.

Yuan Longping,     5     cultivated the world’s first high-yield hybrid rice strain not only earned respect from Chinese people but also the global community. His hybrid rice research has been     6     (entire) saving millions of people from hunger. Yuan’s dream was     7     (solve) the global food shortage and promote hybrid rice around the world. China has achieved     8     great wonder, feeding nearly one fifth of the world’s population with less than nine percent of the world’s total land. And China is     9     (will) to contribute to global food security and calls for joint efforts to end global hunger and poverty.

It     10     (believe) that Yuan’s dream will come true one day.