1 . The Vjosa River, one of the last wild rivers in Europe, has been declared a national park by the Albanian government, making it become the first wild river park on the continent.

Home to more than 1,000 animal and plant species, the river flows for 270 kilometers, from Greece, through Albania and into the Adriatic Sea. Giving the credit to no dams or other artificial barriers, it is rich in aquatic species and supports a large number of wildlife species, including otters, the endangered Egyptian vulture and the critically endangered Balkan lynx.

The wild river national park will include almost 13,000 acres of land, crossing most of the body of the country, with thousands of people living in its surroundings. The decision to establish the park is more important than people may realize. For years, the Vjosa’s fragile ecosystem has been under threat: at one point as many as 45 hydropower plants (水 电 站) were planned to build across the region. But thanks to the campaigning by environmental NGOs, the tiny Balkan nation was placed at the forefront of river protection.

Albania’s prime minister, Edi Rama, described the creation of the national park as a “truly historic moment” for nature as well as social and economic development. “Today we protect the only wild river in Europe once and for all,” he said. “This is about to change a mindset. Protecting an area does not mean that you make it in isolation from the economy.” He said national parks attract 20% more   tourists   compared with non-protected areas.

The park will cover the 118 miles of the Vjosa in Albania, three main tributaries (支流), and some land, including areas at risk of flooding. Phase II will add other tributaries. Unlike the IUCN's Wilderness Protected Areas, which limit the number of visitors, it will allow recreational tourism and some   other activities such as local fishing, particularly for 60,000 residents in the catchment.

“We hope it will inspire others to come together to protect the wild places we have left, in a meaningful way,” said Ryan Gellert, Patagonia’s CEO, adding that the park was proof that the “destruction of nature did not have to be the price of progress”.

2 . The following properties which the World Heritage Committee has decided to include on the List of World Heritage are in danger according to Article 11 (4) of the Convention (公约).

Virunga National Park (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

Virunga National Park, covering an area of 790,000 ha., includes an outstanding diversity of habitats, ranging from swamps and steppes (沼泽和平原) to the snowfields. Mountain gorillas are also found in the park.

Cultural Landscape and Archaeological Remains of the Bamiyan Valley (Afghanistan)

The cultural landscape and archaeological remains of the Bamiyan Valley stand for the artistic and religious developments which from the 1st to the 13th centuries characterized ancient Bakhtria. The area contains a number of Buddhist monastic ensembles (佛教寺院), as well as strong buildings from the Islamic period.

Okapi Wildlife Reserve (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

The Okapi Wildlife Reserve occupies about one-fifth of the Ituri forest in the northeast of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The reserve contains threatened species of primates and birds surviving in the wild. It also has some amazing scenery, including waterfalls on the Ituri and Epulu rivers. The reserve is inhabited by traditional nomadic pygmy Mbuti and Efe hunters.

Historic Center of Vienna (Austria)

Vienna developed from early Celtic and Roman settlements into a Medieval and Baroque city, the capital of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It played an important role as a leading European music center, from the great age of Viennese Classicism through the early part of the 20th century.

3 . John “Charlie” Veron-widely known as “the Godfather of Coral Reef (珊瑚礁)”-is a celebrated expert who has personally discovered nearly a quarter of the world’s coral species and has spent the past 45 years diving Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. But now the 73-year-old is raising the alarm about its future. The Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders, is 2, 300 kilometers long and is the only living organism that can be seen from space. It is considered a World Treasure Site due to its biodiversity (生物多样性)with 30 species of whales, dolphins and sharks. Within the reef itself, there are also a number of tiny organisms and fishes.

However, its health is threatened. After the recent mass bleaching (白化)events, Veron dived in many areas of the Great Barrier Reef to see the damage for himself. “I was seeing and feeling it and it was absolutely shocking, ” he says.

Veron says the mass bleaching events in the past few years-and the possibility of losing one of nature’s greatest treasures-were a wake-up call for the world in the wider battle against climate change, which, together with the rising sea temperature, is considered the greatest threats to the reef.

Fortunately, earlier this year, the Australian government announced nearly 400 million dollars in new funding towards scientific projects designed to help the reef.

There has been criticism in Australia about the slow process for the funding. “It won’t be wasted, though,”Veron says. “As scientists will be able to create a sort of seed bank to protect the species until the climate is good enough to rebuild the reef. What the scientists hope to do is to help nature along a bit after the big carbon dioxide increase is over and it starts to come down.”

Over the last 100 years, many dinosaur egg fossils(化石)     1    (find), but finding one with a well-preserved embryo(胚胎) inside is extremely rare. A dinosaur embryo     2    (date) back to 66 million years ago was recently discovered in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province. The    3    (perfect) preserved fossil is helping researchers understand the link between modern birds and their dinosaur ancestors.

The egg,     4    was named “Baby Yingliang”, is placed in the Yingliang Stone Nature History Museum in Fujian Province. The creature     5    (measure) 27 centimeters from head to tail, and it lies inside a 17-centimeter-long egg. Its position within the egg indicates that these dinosaurs developed     6    birdlike position close to hatching, according to the study published in the journal iScience in 2021. 

Paleontologists believe it belongs to a toothless dinosaur     7    (call) Oviraptor. They had varied beaks(喙) and body sizes,     8    they can adopt a wide range of diets. Team member Steve Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, told China Daily that this little dinosaur looks just like a baby bird in its egg, providing more evidence that many features of today’s birds first evolved in their ancestors.

Dinosaur embryos are some of the rarest fossils and most of them are incomplete with the bones dislocated. The embryo is preserved     9    great condition and helps us answer many questions about dinosaurs’     10    (grow).

6 . Humans are responsible for 25% to 40% more of the total share of methane emissions(甲烷排放)than previously estimated, according to a new study in Nature.

Methane is one of the most powerful and effective greenhouse gases: about 28 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere. It's responsible for about a quarter of global warming. It's produced naturally by animals, volcanoes, and wetlands, but it's also a byproduct of oil and gas production. It's this last form of methane that the study focused on.

Researchers used ice core measurements from Greenland from 1750 to 2013, plus previous data from Antarctica. They melted the ice to let the small quantities of ancient air trapped inside come out. These act a bit like time capsules,allowing us to learn about the methane in the atmosphere at the time. They used carbon-14, which comes from living things, as a substitute(替代物)to determine whether the methane they found came from biological sources. Until 1870, around the time when we started using fossil(化石)fuels, almost all methane came from these sources. After that, there was a rise in methane that didn't have any carbon-14, from ancient fossil sources in which carbon-14 had disappeared. That allowed the researchers to compare natural methane with methane caused by human activity.

If more methane is created by humans, there's an even bigger opportunity to control how much we release. Methane stays in the atmosphere for only a decade(compared with 200 years for carbon dioxide). So efforts to cut methane, which mostly comes from the production and transportation of gas and oil, could bring great benefit right away.

7 . One girl is being praised for a letter of apology she wrote to the rangers (园林管理员) at the National Parks Service (NPS). She reportedly _________ a rock home. In expressing her _________, the girl also returned the rock to the park. Later the NPS shared the letter on their Facebook page.

“Dear Park Ranger, I _________ like Tom Branch Falls,” the girl, named Karina, began her letter. “I love it so much that I _________ to take a souvenir home.”

“So I took a rock. I’m _________, and I want to return it,” she said. The heartfelt letter _________ with a postscript (附言) of “also look at the back”—where the girl _________ a picture of Tom Branch Falls. _________ for Karina, the park rangers were _________ by her sincere apology and even __________ back.

“Dear Karina, thank you for returning the rock! It has made its way back to Tom Branch Falls. If every __________ took a rock home, that would __________ 11 million rocks would be gone from the park every year,” the park officials wrote in their Facebook post.

“Now that you know to leave __________ the way you find it, we hope you will help share this __________ with others,” the officials wrote. “It is always a __________ thing to give others the chance to discover something meaningful!”

8 . The Great Barrier Reef's outlook remains “very poor” despite coral (珊瑚) recovery over the past year, Australian government scientists said Monday, just days before a UNESCO ruling on the site's world heritage (遗产) status.

The United Nations cultural agency recommended last month that the world's largest reef (珊瑚礁) system be placed on its endangered list because of damage to the corals largely caused by climate change.

The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) said the corals were now in a “recovery window” after a decade of harmful heat stress and cyclones (旋风). But such opportunities were becoming rarer due to the influence of climate change, the government agency, which has monitored the reef for 35 years, said in its annual report released today. “The increasing emergence of climate-related extreme weather events and starfish outbreaks is causing more severe and frequent pressures, giving the reef fewer opportunities like this to recover,”CEO Paul Hardisty said. The scientists surveyed 127 reef sites in 2021 and found hard coral cover had increased at 69 of the 81 locations surveyed in the past two years.

Separate scientific research released last October found the 2, 300-kilometre (1, 400 miles) system had lost half its corals since 1995, with a series of ocean heatwaves causing mass coral death.

Britta Schaffelke, research program director at AIMS, said the latest findings provided a slight hope that the reef still has the power of recovering. But she added that its future is still very poor because of the dangers of climate change and other factors that are affecting the reef.

UNESCO has urged Australia to take urgent climate action but the government has long resisted calls to commit to net zero emissions (排放) by 2050. The government has said it hopes to meet the target “as soon as possible” without harming its economy, insisting dealing with climate change requires a global effort. The reef was worth about US $4. 8 billion a year in tourism for the Australian economy and there are fears that an “in danger” listing could weaken its tourist appeal.

9 . Scientists from the University of Texas at Austin have finally solved the mystery of a huge fossil(化石）that has been unlabeled and unidentified sitting at a Chilean museum for almost a decade. The relic which looks like a flat football, is the largest known soft-shelled egg from a marine reptile（海生爬行动物）that lived on the earth over 66 million years ago. Measuring more than 11 by 7 inches» it is also the second-largest egg belonging to any known animal, only behind the now-extinct elephant bird.

The rare fossil named " The Thing" was discovered inside a rock formation in Seymour Island off the coast of Antarctica in 2011 by a team of researchers including David Rubilar-Rogers. Over the years, the paleontologist（古生物学者）at Chile's National Museum of Natural History has showed the strange fossil to every geologist that came to the museum. However, no one was able to identify “The Thing's" origin until Julia Clarke» a professor at UT-Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences, visited in 2018.

“I showed it to her, and, after a few minutes, Julia told me it could be an egg!" Rubilar-Rogers said.

To confirm Clarke's suspect, Lucas Legendre, a student at UT-Austin who led the study, examined the fossil under a microscope. Sure enough, he found several layers of membrane（薄膜），confirming that the fossil was indeed a soft-shelled egg, similar to the obvious, quick-hatching eggs laid by some modern-day snakes. “The shell is very thin,” said Clarke.

The fossil's identification led to an even bigger mystery—what animal could have laid an egg this size? After considering several potential parents, the researchers concluded that the egg was laid by an ancient marine reptile like a masseur（沧龙）. The fact that the rock formation where the egg had been found had fossil evidence of baby masseurs and the offspring of other marine animals further strengthened their theory.