1 . Kenya has started its biggest rhino (犀牛) relocation project and began the work of tracking and moving 21 of the critically endangered animals, which can each weigh over a ton, to a new home.

A previous attempt at moving rhinos in the East African nation was a disaster in 2018 as all 11 of the animals died. Ten of them died from stress, dehydration and starvation intensified by salt poisoning as they struggled to adjust to saltier water in their new home, investigations found. The other rhino was attacked by a lion. The latest project experienced early troubles. A rhino targeted for moving was successfully hit with a tranquilizer (镇定剂) shot from a helicopter but ended up in a small river. Veterinarians (兽医) and rangers held the rhino’s head above water with a rope to save it while a tranquilizer reversal drug took effect, and the rhino was released.

The black rhinos are a mix of males and females and are being moved from three conservation parks to the private Loisaba Conservancy in central Kenya, the Kenya Wildlife Service said. Rhinos are generally solitary animals, which enjoy being alone, and are at their happiest in large areas. They are being moved because there are too many in the three parks and they need more space to walk and, hopefully, to give birth to babies.

Kenya has had relative success in reviving its black rhino population, which fell below 300 in the mid-1980s because of illegal hunting, raising fears that the animals might be wiped out in a country famous for its wildlife. Kenya now has nearly 1,000 black rhinos, according to the wildlife service. That’s the third biggest black rhino population in the world behind South Africa and Namibia.

Kenyan authorities say they have relocated more than 150 rhinos in the last decade and the country is aiming to grow its black rhino population to about 2,000, which they believe would be the ideal number considering the space available for them in national and private parks.

1. What can be inferred from paragraph 2?

A．Kenya was once stricken by a disaster.

B．Rhinos often like to drink saltier water.

C．The rhino relocation project was challenging.

D．The attempt to move rhinos in 2018 went smooth.

2. What do we know about rhinos?

A．They all weigh less than a ton.	B．They prefer to spend time alone.
C．They adapt to new environments easily.	D．They have gone extinct by the mid-1980s.

3. What does the underlined word “reviving” in paragraph 4 mean?

A．Feeding.

B．Losing.

C．Restoring.

D．Recording.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．Fun Facts About Rhinos	B．Ways of Protecting Rhinos
C．The Culture and History of Kenya	D．The Biggest Rhino Relocation Project in Kenya

2 . 阅读下面短文，在空白处填入1个适当的单词或括号内单词的正确形式。

The main structure of the Datengxia water resources management facility in Southwest China has been completed four months ahead     1     schedule, the Ministry of Water Resources said on Saturday.

The project,     2     is located in the Xijiang River, has eight power generation     3     (unit), each with an installed capacity of 200,000 kilowatts (千瓦). It can     4     (annual) generate more than 6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

In cooperation with other reservoirs (水库), the project can help Wuzhou, a city with     5     population of over 2.8 million in Guangxi, deal with once-in-a-hundred-year floods. Previously, the city was only able to hold floods that occur once every 50 years. The project also enables some cities in the Pearl River Delta     6     (resist) floods that happen once every two centuries.

The ministry said the Datengxia facility will also provide strong support for rural development, offering irrigation (灌溉) water to 80,000 hectares of farmland and     7     (address) drinking water shortage for almost 1.4 million people in Guangxi.

The project has already played     8     (significance) roles in the past three years when it was put into trial operation. For example, in June last year, it helped prevent     9     store about 700 million cubic meters of floodwater when the Xijiang River     10     (hit) by a flood. In the peak, it reduced water flow by 3,500 cubic meters per second.

3 . The green revolution in the 1960s was one of the greatest achievements in human history. By promoting more productive varieties of wheat and, especially, rice, scientists in India, Mexico, China and the Philippines doubled Asia’s rice yields from 1965 to 1995.

But the world has reached a crossroad again. By one estimate, the world will need to produce almost a third more rice by 2050. Yet rice production has increased by less than 1% a year over the past decade.

This has many explanations. Urbanization and industrialization have made labour and farmland scarcer (稀缺的). Overuse of chemicals and irrigation have poisoned soils and dried up groundwater. But the biggest reason may be global warming that often leads to extreme conditions. Heavy rains and droughts last year in India, the world’s biggest rice exporter, led to a reduced harvest and an export ban. Floods in Pakistan, the fourth-biggest exporter, wiped out 15% of its rice harvest. Rising sea-levels are causing salt to enter the Mekong Delta, Vietnam’s “rice bowl”.

It is getting worse. Rice is not just a victim of climate change, but also a contributor to it. It is a bigger source of greenhouse gas than any foodstuff except beef. If you count the destruction of forestland for rice fields, that footprint is even bigger.

Therefore, governments need to attract producers and consumers away from rice. India and Indonesia are promoting millet, which is more nutritious and uses much less water. Canceling subsidies (补贴) that favour rice over other crops would make such efforts more effective. India, for example, purchases rice from farmers, often at above-market rates, then distributes it as food aid to the poor. It should make its interventions more rice-unfriendly, by replacing subsidies and free rice with income support for farmers and the poor. That would encourage farmers to choose the best crop for their local conditions — much of India’s agricultural north-west would switch from rice to wheat overnight. Poor Indians would be free to choose a more balanced diet. As a result, it would correct a market unfavorable to environment and health.

1. What can we know about the green revolution in Asia?

A．It has remarkably reduced the use of water and chemicals.

B．It once increased rice production by more than 3% a year.

C．It has popularized more productive crops, especially wheat.

D．It has been mainly led by scientists from America and Europe.

2. What is the most serious threat to rice production according to the text?

A．Worsening global warming.	B．Unnecessary bans on rice export.
C．Lowering prices for the crop.	D．Urbanization and industrialization.

3. What does the author suggest the Indian government do?

A．Expand the planting of rice.	B．Give rice farmers more subsidies.
C．Replace rice with better local crops.	D．Distribute rice as food aid to the poor.

4. Which of the following can be the best title for the text?

A．Achievements of the Green Revolution	B．Efforts to Promote More Suitable Crops
C．Consequences of the Green Revolution	D．Ideas to Fix the Current Global Rice Crisis

7 . Researchers in Australia have identified enzymes (酶) in the body of certain beetle larvae (甲虫幼虫) that can degrade or break down plastic. In a study published in Microbial Genomics, they write that these “superworms” could help reduce plastic waste in the future.

“Superworms are like mini recycling plants, cutting up the polysyrene (聚苯乙烯) with their mouths and then feeding it to the bacteria in their stomach,” said Chris Rinke from the University of Queensland in Australia. “The breakdown products from this reaction can then be used by other microbes to create high-value chemicals.”

In the study, scientists divided beetle larvae into three groups, feeding one group wheat bran, one polystyrene and one nothing. Over three weeks, they monitored their growth. “We found that superworms fed a diet of just polystyrene not only survived, but even had marginal weight gains,” said Rinke. “This suggests the worms can get energy from the polystyrene, most likely with the help of their stomach bacteria.”

On the other hand, the plastic-fed worms gained much less weight and were overall much less healthy than the bran-fed ones, though better off than the starvation group. After three weeks, some larvae were also set aside to grow into beetles, according to the study. About 93% of the bran-fed larvae formed adult worms, while about 67% of the plastic-fed larvae and 10% of the starved larvae formed adult worms.

The researchers investigated the superworm’s stomach bacteria to find the specific enzymes linked to plastic degradation, writes Fionna M. D. Samuels for Scientific American. The enzyme that degrades the polystyrene appears to live with the stomach bacteria, not the worm itself.

Polystyrene is one of the most common plastics used today. But it’s not very chemically reactive, and breaking it down with industrial recycling methods takes high heat. So, researchers have been looking for plastic-degrading enzymes and bacteria for years.

Further research will still need to be done to figure out how to employ these worms, bacteria and enzymes in recycling facilities.

1. What does Chris Rinke compare superworms to?

A．Small plants.

B．Beetle larvae.

C．Stomach bacteria.

D．High-value chemicals.

2. What does the underlined word “marginal” mean in Paragraph 3?

A．Few.

B．Tiny.

C．Obvious.

D．Normal.

3. What is the sixth paragraph intended to show?

A．The damage of plastic to life.

B．Possible causes of plastic pollution.

C．Researchers’ efforts over the years to recycle plastic.

D．The necessity of finding out a way to degrade plastic.

4. What is the purpose of the text?

A．To report a new way to recycle plastic.	B．To call on people to reduce plastic waste.
C．To explain how larvae can degrade plastic.	D．To introduce the findings of a new research.

8 . Finding a California condor in the wild would be the most unusual treat. perhaps even more unusual than finding a wolf in Yellowstone National Park. In fact, the wolf was what opened my eyes to the fact that humans could bring an animal back to the place where it had disappeared.

In 1987, there were only 27 California condors left, none of which were in the wild, only in captive breeding programs, It was those breeding programs that contributed to their population rise, enough that by 1991 some of them could be freed into the wild.

Still, the hope of seeing a California condor, which remains an endangered species, is very low, let alone getting a photo of one. California condor population dropped mostly due to human factors, such as poaching and living areas destruction-these are challenges California condors still face today.

Although this is just a bird’s-eye view of the challenges California condors face and there are many others, it is part of why the opportunity to work with the US Fish and Wildlife Service team and their partners helping their recovery is so special to me as a photographer. I am not only able to photograph the birds in their wild living areas, but also understand and record how difficult the work is of those people on the front lines of the protection.

I am grateful for the work of the team, and my hope is that California condor population will continue to rise allowing future generations an opportunity I never had when I first got here-to look to the sky and see one flying around.

1. What helped the increase of the California condor population in 1987?

A．Rules for hunters.	B．Captive breeding programs.
C．The improved natural environment.	D．The enlargement of wild living areas.

2. What does the author say about taking photos of a California condor in the wild?

A．It is difficult.

B．It is easy.

C．It is boring.

D．It is dangerous.

3. What did the author do when working with the US Fish and Wildlife Service team?

A．He guided ways for them.	B．He made records by photos.
C．He helped the birds to recover.	D．He rebuilt the birds’ living areas.

4. What is the best title for the text?

A．New Way, New Hope	B．Wolves and California Condors
C．A Photo of a California Condor	D．The California Condor’s Coming Back

9 . It’s a few weeks since both the United States and the European Union confirmed the hottest average global temperature ever recorded. Intense and unusual heat waves, along with fires, storms, and other extreme weather events, seemed to make 2023 the year when climate change became more disturbing.

Of course, climate change is more complicated than things simply getting hotter, but the overall warming of the earth is perhaps the most direct consequence of the carbon dioxide we have released (释放) into the atmosphere since the 19th century. What to do about this problem is the subject of this month’s cover story, in which writer Sam Howe Verhovek and photographer Davide Monteleone take a closer look at carbon removal.

Ideas for how to remove carbon from the atmosphere and store or use it in some way have been around for a long time, but we’ve made little progress. Now we may be at the point where urgency, combined with technological advances, market demands, and creative vision, is making carbon removal a better choice for helping us manage the climate crisis.

Many environmentalists argue that carbon removal is a red herring (鲱鱼) that take our attention away from the need to dramatically reduce our emissions(排放). The first industrial revolution got us into this mess; maybe a second one can assist us with getting out of it.

1. What makes the year of 2023 more disturbing?

A．The wildfire led to heavy forest loss.

B．Various types of climate disaters occured frequently.

C．The global temperature broke the historical record.

D．Extreme weather caused a large number of death↵.

2. What directly causes the warming of the earth?

A．The rise of average global temperature.

B．The technology of global carbon removal.

C．The emission of carbon dioxide for a long time.

D．The changes of complicate c climate in the late years.

3. What’s the author’s attitude toward the progress of carbon removal?

A．Unsatisfied.

B．Unclear.

C．Thrilled.

D．Approving.

4. Which of the following are some environmentalists most likely to support?

A．Making carbon removal.	B．Reducing carbon emission.
C．Slowing down the industrial development.	D．Enhancing the second industrial revolution.

10 . 阅读下面材料，在空白处填入适当的内容(只填1个单词)或括号内单词的正确形式。

Due to the improvement of ecological and environmental     1     (protect) in recent years, the western part of Northeast China’s Jilin province has seen     2     (many) rare migratory birds than other places, searching for food in spring and autumn.

With     3     (it) favorable geographical location and wetlands, Jilin is     4     important stop for migratory waterfowl, including large numbers of rare species, such as white cranes (鹤), red-crowned cranes, white storks and Chinese merganser ducks (秋沙鸭).

Western Jilin     5     (focus) on water management and started major projects such as river and lake connectivity in the past decade to improve the ecological conditions.

    6     (locate) on the border of Jilin and Heilongjiang provinces and the Inner Mongolia (蒙古) autonomous region, the Momoge National Nature Reserve in Baicheng city has rich natural     7     (resource) and is a key habitat     8     migratory birds in China settle. It is one of the nine major global bird migration routes,     9     more than 5 million migratory birds passing through every year.

The number of white cranes     10     (stop) in the reserve in spring and autumn has risen to around 3,500, with a resting period of about 100 days every year.