1 . For the first time in about 100 years, a rare bird called the takahē is walking freely along the Lake Whakatipu Waimaori Valley in New Zealand after 18 captive birds were released into the wild. The area is also home to a Maori tribe called Ngai Tahu, which has spent years campaigning for the birds to return to their land. The Maori are New Zealand’s Indigenous people (first people known to live there), and they consider the takahē bird to be “taonga”, meaning a treasure.
Takahē are large, round, flightless birds with red legs, and they have lived in New Zealand since prehistoric times. Like many New Zealand birds, takahē evolved to be flightless because there were no mammals to compete with. When Europeans arrived in New Zealand, however, predators such as cats and ferrets were introduced and killed off many flightless birds. Takahē were declared extinct in 1898, but a small number of the birds were discovered in 1948 in a remote part of the Murchison Mountains.
Since then, conservationists have been trying to restore the takahē population in captivity. They gathered the bird’s eggs in order to keep the chicks safe from predators. The chicks were raised by volunteers, who fed them while wearing sockpuppets on their hands to imitate the parent birds. There are now about 500 takahē birds in captivity. Several pairs of adult birds have been released into the island’s sanctuaries and national parks. Experts will monitor them to see how they adapt to their new environment. If everything goes well, they hope to release seven more birds this month and 10 young birds next year.
Ta Tipene O’Regan, an elder of the Ngai Tahu tribe, helped to release the birds. He told The Guardian newspaper, ”There are few things more beautiful than to watch these large birds running back into lands where they haven’t walked for over a century. ”O’Regan said, “It’s an absolute joy. ”
1. As for Maori people, takahē are ______.| A．valuable | B．dangerous | C．adaptable | D．entertaining |
| A．Big bodies | B．Long time captivity. |
| C．Native people’s protection. | D．No competitors. |
| A．Eggs. | B．Predators. | C．Baby birds | D．Parent takahē. |
| A．Native Birds back in the Wild | B．A Big Joy of Maori Tribes |
| C．Rare Eggs Protected by Volunteers | D．Distinct Mammals in New Zealand |
2 . After nearly 70 years of space exploration, Earth is now surrounded by space junk. Recently, an accident made the cleanup more difficult to start.
According to the European Space Agency (ESA) , scientists plan on testing their “junk truck”, ClearSpace-1, in 2025. It’s a spacecraft with four arms that can catch debris (碎片) and bring it back to Earth. They have chosen to bring back VESPA, a 113-kilogram, two-meter-wide rocket part. However, in August, it was hit by another piece of space junk, creating new pieces. The ESA is now revising its cleanup plan.
Most satellites today are sent into Earth’s low orbit, which reaches up to around 2, 000 kilometers above the Earth. There, spacecraft are most likely to crash with each other. There may be as many as 170 million pieces of space junk in orbit. Big or small, any of the pieces can cause harm to a spacecraft.
In terms of the cleanup, scientists have some other ideas. One popular plan is to equip a spacecraft with harpoons (叉) and magnets (磁铁) . The craft would shoot the harpoon to stick into the debris before “throwing” it back to Earth. Magnets could move the debris, changing its direction. The debris would burn after entering Earth’s atmosphere so there wouldn’t be much left when it reaches Earth. Scientists are also considering shooting lasers (激光) from spacecraft to heat up the debris’ surface, creating a small push that would change the debris’ orbit. This change would allow the debris to be caught by Earth’s gravity.
Space junk can be very dangerous, and space agencies around the world are testing and planning the cleanup. But why haven’t they done anything yet? One reason is the expense.
It would take between $4, 000 and $60, 000 per kilogram to catch one piece of debris larger than 10 cm. And around $300 million is needed to develop the laser technology.
1. What’s the mission of ClearSpace-1?| A．To mark Earth’s low orbit. | B．To monitor space debris. |
| C．To study the harm of space junk. | D．To bring VESPA back to Earth. |
| A．By burning it up in space. | B．By pushing it into deeper space. |
| C．By moving it towards a spacecraft. | D．By redirecting it into the atmosphere. |
| A．It’s complex. | B．It’s risky. | C．It’s costly. | D．It’s changeable. |
| A．Escaping from Crowded Space | B．Looking for Ways to Clean up Space |
| C．Dangerous Space Debris | D．Exceptional Space Exploration |
In the grip of a cold wave, with temperatures plummeting below minus 10 degrees Celsius, the plateau county of Jishishan in Northwest China’s Gansu province was jolted from its slumber midnight Monday by a 6.2-mngnitude earthquake, causing death,
According to a local villager Ding Xiaolong, he was asleep at home when the quake struck. He felt
“I received a call from him after the quake, asking me to check on the situation of his family,” Ding said, adding that he rushed to their house, only to discover that it
As of 10 am Tuesday, a total of 105 were confirmed
Members of the Gansu branch of the Blue Sky Rescue Team,
In Dahejia township,
One spring, I was hired as groundskeeper at a Country Inn, a famous bed-and-breakfast located in Washington state. The grand house is in a beautiful place. Many famous people have visited and even had their own rooms there. The owners, Philip and Cecelia, have done a perfect job for the house. However, the gardens were very overgrown. Worse yet, there was another problem: a very persistent doe (母鹿).
Every day when I came to work, there was new evidence of the deer’s big appetite. I tried many preventives: spray, human hair, soap, you name it-but none of those things had effect. Often when I was weeding, I’d look over and there she’d be, munching some tasty pieces. Worst of all, she feasted on the roses, in which Cecelia took great pride. I became so frustrated that I named her “Dinner”— and wanted to serve her on plates.
One morning, I was on my hands and knees pulling out vines and bushes when I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. There was Dinner, not five feet away, munching a large leaf and staring at me. I felt a connection with this animal. We did have something in common-we were both mothers. I got the crazy idea of communicating with her and it seemed she wanted the same thing.
What’s up? I asked in my head.
I’m here because I feel safe, was the gentle reply I felt I heard. I have my fawns (幼鹿) bedded down nearby, and there is plenty to eat. When the twins are older after summer, I will move them deeper into the forest.
I understand that, I assured her. People come here too, from far away. I guess they’ll be interested to see you. I promise that nobody will harm you or your children. I don’t mind sharing the vegetation but Cecelia loves roses, too. She is very upset when they are all eaten.
A loud crash broke the magic. Our eyes met again briefly before she leaped off across the driveway, disappearing into the forest. Has I really communicated with the deer?
Paragraph1.
I went into the kitchen where Cecelia was preparing the evening meal.
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Paragraph2.
Every day, I enjoyed watching Dinner with the twins and my presence never bothered them.
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5 . Growing up on a mountain farm in Tyrol, Fritz enjoyed watching how cows and horses interacted with each other more freely, once they’d been led out of the barn and into pasture. It was what he observed in his boyhood that took root in his pursuit of becoming a biologist. After he finished his study at university. Fritz landed work at Austria’s Konrad Lorenz Research Center, raising raven chicks by hand and teaching graylag geese how to open boxes as he pursued his PhD. Working this closely with free-living animals was exactly what he’d dreamed of as a boy.
In 1997, a zoo gave the research center its first northern bald ibis chicks (隐鹮) Nowhere near as teachable as geese—and not even close to super intelligent ravens—the ibises frustrated most of the scientists. But Fritz was fascinated. He devoted himself to taking care of them. After the ibises were first released back into the wild more than 20 years ago, Fritz learned that spending generations in zoo hadn’t reduced their drive to migrate (迁徙), though it did leave them geographically uninformed. In their search for “south”, some ended up in Russia. What the ibises needed, Fritz thought, was a guide.
Fritz decided he would teach the birds a new, safer migration route by guiding them himself in a tiny aircraft. And he was confident he could succeed in this daring, unconventional plan—because he had done it before. “Around that time, the movie ‘Fly Away Home’ was a huge hit with us biologists,” Fritz says. When he announced that he’d do the same with the ibises, he was initially laughed at. But Fritz didn’t give up. He modified an ultralight aircraft so it would travel at speeds slow enough for his winged students to keep up. He had been his young pupils’ only provider of food, love and hugs since they were just a few days old, and the ibises eagerly followed their teacher, who just happened to pilot a fairly noisy machine.
In 2004, three years after some initially bumpy (颠簸的) experiments, Fritz led the first batch of birds from Austria to Italy, and has since led 15 such migrations. Over that time, he has rewilded 277 young ibises, many of which then started to pass the route on to their own young.
1. What determined Fritz’s career choice?| A．Fritz’s childhood observation. | B．Fritz’s passion for biology. |
| C．Fritz’s growth environment. | D．Fritz’s interaction with animals. |
| A．They are easy to get lost in the migration. |
| B．They are lacking in the desire to migrate. |
| C．They are accustomed to the life in the zoo. |
| D．They are strikingly far from easy to teach. |
| A．The ibises were too awkward to find a new migration route. |
| B．The ibises needed a guide for lack of geographical knowledge. |
| C．Fritz wanted to prove that he could succeed in a daring plan. |
| D．Fritz wanted to recreate a touching scene of a popular movie. |
| A．sensitive but courageous. | B．innovative but demanding. |
| C．persistent and insightful. | D．enthusiastic and cooperative. |
6 . Flash droughts (突发性干旱) develop fast, and when they hit at the wrong time, they can ruin a region’s agriculture. They are also becoming increasingly common as the planet warms. In a study published in the journal Communication Earth &Environment, we found that the risk of flash droughts, which can develop in a few weeks, is on pace to rise in every major agricultural region around the world in the coming decades.
In North America and Europe, cropland that had a 32% annual chance of a flash drought a few years ago could have a greater chance of a flash drought by the final decades of this century. That result would put food production, energy, and water supplies under increasing pressure. The cost of ravage will also rise. A flash drought in the Dakotas and Montana in 2017 caused $2.6 billion in agricultural damage in America alone.
All droughts begin when rainfall stops. What’s interesting about flash droughts is how fast they reinforce themselves, with some help from the warming climate. When the weather is hot and dry, soil loses water rapidly. Dry air extracts moisture from the land, and rising temperature can increase this evaporative demand. The lack of rain during a flash drought can further contribute to the feedback processes. Under these conditions, crops and vegetation begin to die much more quickly than they do during typical long-term droughts.
In our study, we used climate models and data from the past 170 years to assess the drought risks ahead under three conditions for how quickly the world takes action to slow the pace of global warming. If greenhouse gas emissions (排放物) from vehicles, power plants, and other human sources continue at a high rate, we found that cropland in much of North America and Europe would have a 53% annual chance of flash droughts, respectively, by the final decades of this century. Globally, the largest projected increases in flash droughts would be in Europe and the Amazon. Slowing emissions can reduce the risk significantly, but we found flash droughts would still increase by about 6% worldwide under low-emission conditions.
1. Why is the flash drought a concern?| A．It often develops and strikes unexpectedly. | B．It does go hand in hand with rainfall. |
| C．It can be destructive to regional agriculture. | D．Its chance has increased dramatically. |
| A．Control. | B．Assessment. | C．Production. | D．Damage. |
| A．The constant rainfall. | B．The increasing food demand. |
| C．The warming planet. | D．The fast pace of modern life. |
| A．To cut down on carbon footprint. | B．To evaluate the risks regularly. |
| C．To study climate models and data. | D．To monitor weather condition. |
7 . Conservation organization Plantlife is urging people to put away their lawnmowers (除草机) for a month and let wild flowers grow instead, as part of its No Mow May project.
Leaving the grass uncut will create a habitat that will benefit bees and other insects, the organization says. Plantlife says lawns could be biodiversity hot-spots if left alone. It says those who participated in its campaign last year reported the growth of more than 250 plant species on their lawns. Among these were wild strawberry and wild garlic. There were also sightings of declining species like green-winged orchids.
One gardener who has been enjoying a more relaxed approach is Tom Jennings, 45, from Buckinghamshire. He says it’s a chance to reconnect with the natural world. “Those fascinated by neat gardens use not only lawnmowers but chemicals.” says Tom.
After letting his back garden grow out, Tom witnessed an explosion of wild flowers—important for pollinators (授粉者) such as bees. Tom says he’s been shocked at how quickly insects have returned to his back garden: an encouraging signal given the global decline of insect populations.
According to Colette Webb, 42, who lives in West Sussex, there are added benefits to letting nature gradually take its course in the garden. “It saves you a bit of time and arguments with the husband about getting the lawnmower out—something my husband hates doing,” she says. “There’s a part of me that thinks the garden is really messy, but when you sit there for some time a day and look at what’s it’s supporting, you realize it’s for the benefit of nature.”
But not everyone is on board with the idea, says David. One of his neighbours is pursuing their own re-wilding project in their own garden—but the other is yet to be convinced. “And my mother, who’s 81, still says it looks untidy,” he laughs.
1. What is the major goal of Plantlife’s No Mow May project?| A．Helping promote biodiversity. | B．Attracting more garden visitors. |
| C．Making their gardens look more natural. | D．Saving people’s trouble of mowing their gardens. |
| A．He is crazy about neat gardens. |
| B．He hates having to cut the grass regularly. |
| C．He believes the project is increasing the number of insects. |
| D．He benefited a lot from the decline of insects in his garden. |
| A．She gets on better with her husband. | B．Her husband has come to enjoy gardening. |
| C．Her garden is no longer as messy as it used to be. | D．She has formed the habit of sitting in the garden. |
| A．Shows concern about. | B．Makes response to. | C．Agrees with. | D．Comes up with. |
8 . Recently, China has announced the list of the first five national parks. Each of them is divided into two parts — the core protection area and the general control area. In the core protection area, only research and surveillance (监视) in science are allowed. And the general control area is open to the public, allowing travel activities such as camping and hiking. In the future, national parks are expected to be natural classrooms. People can learn about different kinds of animals and plants through eco-friendly travel activities.
Three River-Source National Park on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is the largest national park in China. Because it is home to the sources of the Yangtze, Yellow and Lancang rivers, people call it “China’s water tower”.
Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park is in Heilongjiang and Jilin Provinces. It covers an area of 14,100 square kilometers. It is our country’s biggest and only place for wild Siberian tigers and Amur leopards to live in.
Wuyi Mountain National Park in Fujian Province is a UNESCO natural and cultural heritage site. The forest makes up over 96 percent of the park. The park is the paradise of birds, kingdom of snakes and world of insects. You can also see the Danxia landform there.
Giant Panda National Park connects panda habitats in Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu Provinces. Inside the park are more than 1,600 wild giant pandas. They make up over 70 percent of the pandas in China.
Hainan Tropical Rain forest National Park is the largest tropical forest in China. There are more than 400 kinds of plants that can only be found in Hainan.
1. Which is called “China’s water tower”?| A．Three River-Source National Park. | B．Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park. |
| C．Giant Panda National Park. | D．Hainan Tropical Rainforest National Park. |
| A．a perfect place | B．a happy feeling |
| C．a good example | D．a sweet smile |
| A．Three River-Source National Park is the largest national park in China. |
| B．Northeast China Tiger and Leopard National Park covers an area of 14,100 square kilometers. |
| C．There are more than 1,600 wild giant pandas in Giant Panda National Park. |
| D．More than 400 kinds of plants and animals can only be found in Hainan. |
| A．The beautiful scenes of nature | B．The home of animals and plants |
| C．The introduction to the five national parks | D．The relationships among the five national parks |
9 . Grace and her family thought they had lost Thor forever when they moved to Windsor, Nova Scotia from British Columbia last August.
“We probably spent seven or eight months looking for Thor,” Grace said. “What made it worse was that there were rumors (谣言) going around that there was dogfighting in our area. We still always hoped that somebody had taken him to be a pet, but you just never knew.”
“It was terrible. My daughter Bronwyn would try to find Thor everywhere, which had been a Christmas present for her. Even while watching TV programmes, she would say, ‘Oh, look! That dog looks like Thor!’” Grace said. Then the family moved, and the hope became impossible.
But one day, the phone rang. It was their former vet in British Columbia, saying Thor was in a rescue shelter (收容所) in High River, Alberta. He had been found at a work camp in the northern part of the place and taken to south by a man planning to keep him. But the man was forced to turn him over to the shelter when he couldn’t keep Thor in his rented home. Luckily, the ring on Thor’s neck gave people some information.
Thor was flown to Nova Scotia last week. The family picked him up at the airport. “Thor was just lying in his box and looking down, and my daughter walked over and said, ‘Hey Thor.’ He immediately stood up, trying to greet my daughter. We let him out and he jumped on her as if he was giving her a big hug and he kissed her face. Then he sat down suddenly at her feet and rolled over for attention. He was cute.” Grace said.
1. Who helped Thor back home?| A．The author. | B．The former vet. | C．Bronwyn. | D．Grace. |
| A．He came back by air. |
| B．He was killed in the dog fighting. |
| C．He was given to Grace by Bronwyn. |
| D．He moved to British Columbia with the family. |
| A．A travel brochure. |
| B．A geography text book. |
| C．A news report. |
| D．A health magazine. |
In 2016, Shennongjia made it onto the UNESCO World Heritage List. It was awarded this status because it meets two criteria
For the first criterion, Shennongjia is
What’s more, according to official statistics, over 3,000 plant species have been recorded, which represents more than ten percent of China’s total floral
Therefore, it is
