2 . Growing up in coastal Maine, Lynda Doughty spent lots of time out on the sea. There she often saw whales, seals and other marine (海洋的) animals. She developed a(n) _______ for the wildlife living along the coast.

“I remember being so amazed by them and _______ what was happening in their life,” Doughty said.

She also _______ that their livelihood was influenced by pollution and other human-related activities. She wanted to do something to _______ these animals.

So she became a marine _______ and worked with organisations that provided help for sick and injured sea animals. But as many nonprofits (非营利机构) closed their doors, Doughty decided to step in.

In 2011, she _______ her nonprofit, Marine Mammals of Maine, and has since provided help and medical care for more than 3,000 sea animals.

When COVID-19 broke out, things became more difficult, but they couldn’t _______—the animals _______, needed their help.

“We were so nervous of how we would _______ as a nonprofit in uncertain times,” Doughty said. “________, our team stood strong and we were able to continue to help animals.”

When another New England-based marine animal rescue program ________ its animal care during COVID-19, Doughty’s work became more ________ than ever.

“We could no longer take any ________ to their rescue center and there were not enough rehabilitation (康复) places for these animals. Actually, we were really ________ and there was more pressure for our center to stay open,” Doughty said.

“I feel this strong ________ to help these animals,” Doughty said. “This is what I was put on the earth to do.”

Protecting the Wild Animals

4 . 400 million tons of plastic are generated annually, most of which comes from single-use plastic While countries are making progress in reducing this waste through paper bags and straws, there are still applications where the properties of plastic are necessary.

Transparent (透明的) wood is an alternative for such applications and is highly preferred since it prevents the harm of petroleum-derived (石油衍生的) plastic products. German scientist Siegfried Fink first created transparent wood in the year 1992, and over the past three decades it has been significantly improved by other researchers as well.

In its natural form, wood is not transparent. However, researchers have found that removing lignin, a naturally occurring biopolymer that provides structural support for the plant tissue, can make it transparent. To do so, the wood is soaked in a warm solution consisting of multiple chemicals, followed by boiling it in another solution. This removes the lignin completely and turns the wood white. However, the space that was occupied by lignin needs to be filled up to maintain structural integrity. This process is done by using a resin (树脂) at a temperature of 185 Fahrenheit (85℃).

The final product can have as much as 90 transparency, and it doesn’t break easily. More importantly, it is more biodegradable than glass or plastic.

While transparent wood isn’t commercial yet, it has been employed in a wide variety of applications ranging from construction to energy storage, making flexible electronics and packaging.

The researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology ( IIT) conducted a life-cycle analysis (LCA) of transparent wood to determine the environmental impact of its production and end-of-life (EOL) cycle. The study found that using hydrogen peroxide for delignification, followed by using epoxy for infiltration, was the most eco-friendly. When scaled up for industrial production, the former method would lower electricity consumption by as much as 98. 8 percent.

EOL analysis showed that transparent wood had a reduced ecological impact compared to polyethylene (聚乙烯), paving the way for it to be commercially adapted to replace the petroleum-based material.

6 . All over the world, animals and plants are in trouble. People are trying their best to help them.     1    .

Donate some money.

Many zoos and wildlife organizations have programs that let kids donate money to help a specific endangered animal.     2    .

Don’t release fish or pets onto the wild.

    3    . Your pet is not native to where you live. Set loose, it might become an invasive species, or it might spread parasites. So keep your fish in their tank, or find them a new home but not the pond.

    4    .

Chemicals used to kill garden weeds and bugs are a big problem for animals. Maybe if you offered to pull up the weeds instead, you could help people to use fewer poisons.

Speak up!

Share what you know and speak up for the animals. Write letters! Powerful people need to know that you care and that you’re keeping an eye on them to make sure they do their jobs right and protect the planet.

Make less trash.

Pollution and plastic trash are bad for animals and nature. How can you help?

Bring drinks from home in a refillable bottle.     5    . Take cloth bags to the store and remind grow-ups of they forget.

7 . In habitats across the planet, animals periodically drop everything to walk, fly or swim to a new place. Wildlife such as whales and geese learn migration paths by following their parents. Others, including small songbirds, gain the distance and direction of their migration within their genetic code. And some animals use a combination of genetics and culture to guide their migration.

Another group of migrators does not quite fit either model, and researchers have only recently started to figure out how they find their way. Take the Cory’s shearwater, an oceangoing sea bird that migrates over the Atlantic every year. The young do not migrate with their parents, so culture cannot explain their journeys. And the exact paths vary wildly from individual to individual, making genetics equally unlikely.

Cory’s shearwaters are long-lived, rarely producing young successfully before age nine. This leaves an opening for learning and practice to develop their migration patterns. Researchers call this the “exploration-refinement”, and until now it has been hypothetical (假设的) because of difficulties in tracking migratory animals’ movements.

But a team of researchers has done that by attaching small geolocators to more than 150 of the birds aged four to nine. They found that younger birds traveled longer distances, for longer periods, and had more diverse paths than older birds. “We finally have evidence of the ‘exploration-refinement’ for migratory birds,” says Letizia Campioni, who led the study. Younger Cory’s shearwaters are able to fly just as fast as the adults—but they do not, suggesting that the young do more exploring, which gradually fades as they mature and settle into a preferred course.

Although it may seem less efficient than other strategies, “exploration refinement could be beneficial to birds and other organisms in a rapidly changing world due to unpredictable man-made changes,” says Barbara Frei. “It might be safer to repeat a behavior that was recently successful than to rely on patterns that were perfected long ago but might no longer be safe.”

8 . In mainland Britain, people who has ever attempted to grow berries or nuts — or indeed feed the bird — will know, doing so is identical to an opening move in a game of chess with local grey squirrels, a game the squirrels tend to win. Grey squirrels are also fond of the occasional bird’s eggs or the young birds, and enjoy tearing and eating the bark of young broadleaf trees, which can either kill the trees or leave them open to infection. This, apart from affecting biodiversity and the landscape, harms the wood industry. The loss — in damaged timber, lost carbon revenue and tree replacements — is not insignificant: £37 a year in England and Wales.

Grey squirrels (Sciurus carolinensis), introduced from North America in 1876, have nearly replaced the native red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) in Britain by outcompeting them for food and habitat. They are larger, and stronger, and resistant to squirrel pox virus, while reds are not. About 3 million now live in the UK; the International Union for Conservation of Nature lists the grey squirrel among the top 100 most harmful invasive species in the world.

In Britain, significant efforts have been made to stop grey squirrels’ progress, including trapping, shooting, and releasing pine martens into their habitats. The latest move, a workable system for which was thought to be a decade away, is forbidding the breeding of grey squirrels. However, legal challenges brought so many delays that the invasive grey squirrels. population expanded to an unmanageable level and wiping out was abandoned. The main issue in Britain was thought to be more technological than legal — designing a drug that targets only grey squirrels to prevent them breeding. Another possibility in the years ahead is to use DNA editing to ensure grey females are born unable to give birth.

Obviously, there is a hint of xenophobia (仇外) in some discussions about the introduction of grey squirrels to Britain nearly 150 years ago which has had an impact on the local ecosystem, posing a threat to native species. It’s also worth noting that reds — which also tear bark and take eggs — were seen as pests until the early 1930s, and extensively killed. There is, too, a strong argument that ecosystems evolve naturally, and it may be impractical and unrealistic to intervenes or even resist it. The attraction of controlling the breeding of the grey squirrels is that it is less inhumane, and aims for balance rather than uprooting.