1 . All types of marine life are important. Seaweed (海藻) and corals both play vital roles in the health of the ocean and the health of our communities.

However in the same way that a mountain lion. Which provides a valuable service by hunting diseased or elderly deer, wouldn’t be helping anyone if it took up residence in an office building. Seaweed largely prevents corals from performing their key function in the ecosystem, just like the lion would prevent any of the terrified office workers from doing their work.

There is long-standing competition between seaweed and corals and this competition has been influenced heavily for over a century by overfishing climate change, and coral discases, which resulted in corals being now too weak to compete with seaweed.

Seaweed too often is blocking sunlight from reaching baby corals, while releasing chemicals that prevent corals from reproducing-as well as making them marc likely to be attacked by diseases.

The researchers from Florida International University supposed that if sufficiently distributed, the Caribbean king crab (蟹), lovingly called the “reef (礁)goat”, could make coral reefs free of seaweed fast, so they conducted a case-control study where they released the crabs on some reefs and let some others remain crab-less.

Eating seaweed at a rate higher than any other grazer (食草动物), the crabs were able to reduce seaweed cover by 80%, while a 3 to 5 fold increase of both baby corals and fish species added to the successful outcome.

On dry land, goats have been used as ground clearers for thousands of years, as they eat everything from clover and grasses to poison oak and invasive blackberry thorns. Hopefully, the results of this study can solidify Caribbean king crabs as their equivalent at the bottom of the sea.

The Yellow River Wetland Park in Yinchuan was once a place local people avoided: raw sewage(污水)caused awful smells and almost no grass could grow on the land. It had been several years     1     this area became a popular destination for locals to take a walk and a habitat frequented by migratory birds. Now this Wetland Park has appealed     2     many bird photographers.

The Yinchuan Wetland Park is a microcosm (缩影) of China’s achievements in wetland protection. Last year seven Chinese cities     3     (award) “international wetland cities” at the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands (COP 14). So far, there are 13 wetland cities in China, showing     4     great variety of patterns and styles.

For example, Wuhan,     5     (acknowledge) as a “city of a hundred lakes”, has five large wetland reserves,     6     tens of thousands of birds come to stay in wintertime.

Liangping district in Chongging, however, is more     7     (close) tied to human activity. People built small wetlands in rural areas. What’s more, they have combined these wetlands with organic farms, homestays, and healthcare centers, which     8     (result) in an income increase of 52,000 yuan per household in the past decade.

Panjin in Liaoning province is another surprising wetland city. In the past, the city long suffered from     9     (environment) problems caused by oil production. But now in the coastal wetlands, seagrass turns a breathtaking red every autumn,     10     (create) beautiful “red beaches”.

5 . Tired of the busy and chaotic life in Las Vegas, Nevada for nearly ten years, my family and I decided to slow things down. We wanted to lead an environmental-friendly life.

None of us felt that this could be accomplished where we were living and we all agreed that a move to the country would be great for everyone.

Before long we set about looking for a home in Yucca, Arizona, a very small town of less than 1,000 people. When I called to inquire about the property, I was informed that there was no electricity available in the area. What? No electricity? I almost denied the idea immediately. But what better way is there to go green? After giving it a second thought, we decided to put in an offer and moved in on Thanksgiving Day.

When we first moved to the property, we did some remodeling (改造) and stayed in our motor home. We were confronted with real challenges at the time. But the frustrations just made us work harder. We slowly got things fixed and moved into the house after 38 days.

While living here for the past four months has been a big adjustment, there are many benefits to living off the grid (电线). I think one of the most educational lessons is teaching my kids the importance of conservation. They used to take water, power and gas for granted. We started taking quicker showers, doing only full loads of laundry, turning off the water while brushing our teeth. In addition, we are also trying to make other changes which include reducing the amount of trash we generate by recycling, growing our own organic vegetables and re-purposing things that we would normally throw.

Overall, going off the grid has been great for our family. I hope that once my kids move out of the house, they will keep the habits that they have learned by living off the grid.

6 . Plant a tree!

What’s causing global warming? Is it man-made? Or are temperatures simply changing naturally? Whatever the case, we can at least try to slow things down. But how?

The Wilderness Project has an idea.     1    . If the earth has more trees, greenhouse gases will be reduced, and this will help stop global warming.     2     and improve air quality.

    3    . In Belgium, the Organization for Forests worked with farmers to help them plant more trees. In Spain, the Canopy Project plants one tree for every Spaniard (西班牙人) in order to improve the environment. In Germany, a teenager named Felix Finkbine has been leading a global movement to plant more trees.     4    .

Now, lots of people all over the world have already been planting more trees. In fact, if everyone plants one tree, just one, it will do great good to our environment.

So, what can you do to help?     5    , although you need to get advice on how to look after it. Or you can join a tree planting project such as the ones mentioned above to help save the earth.

So, go on, plant a tree…and save the earth!

7 . Chinese consumers have said they will avoid eating Japanese seafood over safety concerns once Japan starts releasing (排放) nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean.

On July 7, the General Administration of Customs released an import (进口) ban on aquatic products from the 10 Japanese cities. It’s indicated that Japan’s plan to release polluted wastewater into the sea was a matter of global concern. The plan caused more Chinese consumers who eat seafood began to worry about their safety, according to the administration.

According to a survey in 2022 by Chinese market consultancy company iiMedia Research, 39.58 percent of participants eat Japanese seafood once every two or three weeks.

“I will not eat seafood imported from Japan anymore,” said a data engineer surnamed Wang in Shanghai. The 42-year-old has been a fan of Japanese food since 2000 and used to eat Japanese food once a month. “If I have other options, I will choose seafood that does not come from the Pacific Ocean,” he added.

Wang Qian, a financial employee in Beijing, said she has been to about 20 Japanese restaurants so far. “Normally, I would not pay attention to where the seafood came from. But now I will try not to choose seafood from Japan,”she said. “Wastewater poses a threat to human health and marine ecology.”

Wang Qian said that Japan should use other methods to solve the problem, rather than releasing nuclear wastewater into the ocean.

An employee of the Japanese restaurant Jiubanwu, in Beijing, who did not want to be named, told China Daily that the restaurant’s fish and shrimp are imported from Russia, France and other countries. “We have not been buying seafood from Japan since April,” she said.

In addition to food safety, some people are worried about using cosmetic (美容的) products made in Japan.

8 . Naturalist Enzo Suma, who is now 40, lives in Puglia, a region in southern Italy whose long coastline faces the Adriatic Sea. Floating waste accumulates in this relatively enclosed part of the Mediterranean, unlike the open ocean, where the waste tends to be spread over a vast area. Feeling concerned about that, Suma makes it a habit to pick up the washed-up waste along the shore, especially after big winter storms.

One day, Suma was walking along the beach near his home when he discovered a bottle of Coke. Suma noticed on the bottle that the price, clearly printed on the bottom, was in lire, a currency (货币) that hadn’t been used in Italy since it was replaced by the euro in 2002. Could a plastic container have well survived in the Mediterranean, he wondered, for about two decades?

That led him to founding the Archeoplastica museum. It has a collection of about 500 unique pieces recovered from Italian shores and the Coke bottle is the first one of them. All collection demonstrates the unsettling life force of plastic waste in the environment. “Seeing that a product people may have used 30, 40, or 50 years ago remains still unchanged, you’ll feel different. It’s a great shock,” Suma said to a reporter. So Suma often exhibits selected pieces from the Archeoplastica collection at local schools around his hometown of Ostuni.

“The playful side of the work allows you to arrive at the less beautiful side of things,” Suma acknowledged. “Plastic is a kind of useful substance. But it’s unthinkable that a water bottle, made from a material designed to last so long, can be used for just a few days—or even minutes—before becoming garbage. Clean the beaches. Clean the oceans. Recycle. But if we are still throwing out plastics, none of those are going to be long-term solutions.”

9 . My 5-year-old daughter Kai walked around a bus stop, picking up candy wrappers and plastic bottles and throwing them in the waste bin. We were a visiting family here, but she was cleaning the sidewalk, which didn’t shock me, nor was I _________ when strangers looked at us.

Our cleanup project began when we drove past an empty field one day and Kai _________ the field was covered by _________ balloons. We had read about how animals could _________ balloons for food. “Stop,” Kai said, and I _________. Surprisingly, we found the field was full of much trash _________ the balloons. “Can we come back and clean it?” Kai asked. Then each Friday, we returned to have a(n) _________ cleaning.

However, it seems we can never _________ the trash completely. I feel something close to _________! Why are we making kids clean up our __________? It has everything to do with the planet we adults are leaving for kids. Plastic pollution is globally distributed and microplastics have even been discovered in human blood. It is not a __________ story that we have created trash but our next generation cleans up them.

Now Kai hopes to become a marine biologist to protect sharks one day. She still has many years to __________, if adults get serious about solving plastic pollution. We shouldn’t leave our next generation a __________ planet and expect them to save it.

The last time our family was at the beach, we still picked up plastic bottles. Most __________, though, we saw an octopus (章鱼) playing around our feet, a __________ of a harmonious habitat worth protecting.