1 . Vast lands of America are dominated by corn, nearly 100macres of it, stretching from Ohio to the Dakotas. What once was forest today produces the corn that feeds people, cattle and, when made into ethanol (乙醇), cars.

Now, the nation’s airlines want to power their planes with corn, too. United Airlines signed a deal with a Nebraska ethanol company to buy enough sustainable fuel, to power 50,000 flights a year. The government could decide on its tax incentives (税收激励) for the industry as soon as December. “Mark my words, the next 20 years, corn farmers are going to provide 95% of all the sustainable airline fuel,” President Biden said in July.

The airlines’ ambitious goal would likely require nearly doubling ethanol production, which airlines say, with great expectation, would decrease their greenhouse gas emissions. If they succeed, it could transform America’s Corn Belt, stimulating farmers and ethanol producers, but potentially further damaging one of the nation’s most important resources: groundwater.

Corn requires a lot of water to grow and it can take hundreds of gallons to produce a single gallon of ethanol. But as airlines take the idea of ethanol, the vital groundwater faces serious risks. “We’re on track to massively increase water usage without any real sense of how sensitive our groundwater is,” said Jeffrey Broberg, who is concerned about groundwater in Minnesota, a major corn state.

The Department of Energy said in a statement that “water use is a critical part of the conversation surrounding bio-energy sustainability”. It pointed to a 2022 department study that concluded that the United States could significantly reduce pressure on groundwater by shifting fuel production away from water-intensive crops like corn, instead growing more crops that don’t require irrigation (灌溉), like various types of straw, grasses and trees. Hopefully, a better approach will be soon studied and adopted.

2 . The UK typically produces an additional 30% of rubbish throughout the festive period compared to the rest of the year, as Britons collectively send over 100 million bags of rubbish to landfills every Christmas.     1    .

Remember that less is more. Research from Business Waste found that UK citizens spend £700 million on unwanted gifts every year. In addition, of all the purchases made for Christmas, only 1% will remain in use six months down the line.     2    . Furthermore, try to choose products with minimal packaging and recycled materials wherever possible. Simple switches can make a big difference!

    3    . If you’re searching for a gift that does as good as it looks, step inside the Ocean Bottle Christmas Gift Shop. There’s something for everyone, including the planet. When you buy an Ocean Bottle, you fund the collection of one thousand ocean-bound plastic bottles before they enter the ocean. Besides, 67% of these award-winning bottles are recycled.     4    . So, you can rest assured that they won’t end up in the landfill before next Christmas!

You need to know the materials.     5    , it can be easy to forget about other things like wrapping paper or our clothing. For example, some cards and wrapping paper are finished with materials that can’t be recycled. So, from Christmas cards to your Christmas sweater, take the time to look at materials and understand if and how you can deal with them in the most planet-friendly way. Reusing old wrapping paper or purchasing recyclable paper is highly recommended.

3 . Many kinds of turtles (海龟) found in the Philippines are endangered. But now, the turtles have one less threat. Many people who used to collect their eggs to eat or to sell are now working to keep turtles safe.

Those people are called poachers (偷猎者). Now, however, protection organizations are teaching former poachers how to safely collect the eggs and protect them before they hatch (孵化). The people who do this are paid about 37 cents per egg. That is four times more than they would earn from selling them illegally.

One of the former poachers is Johnny Manlugay. “I’ve learned to love this work,” he said, adding that he did not know it was illegal to eat turtle eggs and their meat. He now collects the eggs carefully and brings them to a group called Coastal Underwater Resource Management Actions (CURMA), which takes the eggs and puts them under the sand in a safe place. When the baby turtles hatch, they are directed to the water.

The turtles are called “pawikan” in the local language. They are at risk not only from poachers, but also climate change and habitat loss.

Carlos Tamayo is one of CURMA’s leaders. “We talked to the poachers, and it turned out poaching was just another means for them to earn a living,” he said. “They had no choice.”

Cabagbag is over 40 years old. His wife and seven-year-old son sometimes help him collect turtle eggs. Since October, they have taken over 1,000 eggs to CURMA. Cabagbag said that once he received training and learned that the turtles were endangered, he stopped poaching.

When the baby turtles hatch, many visitors come to watch them run down the beach and into the water. Cabagbag said seeing the turtles get safely into the water brings him a feeling of joy.

4 . While environmental assessments of new roads focus on the danger of habitat destruction, or bats colliding (碰撞) with traffic, the first ever controlled field experiment to investigate the impact of vehicle noise suggests the thunder of road traffic is likely to drive away bats and cause bat activity to decrease by two-thirds.

Researchers played noise recorded from the A38 dual carriage way in demon, with a “dusk average” of 26 vehicle passing per minute, in locations where different bat species flew and fed. The wild bats, including pipistrelle species, were monitored with bat detectors (探测器) placed beside, and 20 metres away, from the recorded noise.

Ultrasonic (超音速) sounds from vehicle were found to block some bat species' high-frequency echo - location calls, which they use to find insect prey (捕获物) such as moths. But more significant was that most bat species sought to avoid audible (听得见的) traffic noise.

“Just like us, bats are likely to find audible road noise an irritation, something they would prefer to avoid rather than it jamming their echo-location,” said Fiona Matt hews, lead author of the paper in Environmental Pollution.

Matthews said the effect of ordinary traffic noise on bats meant that the negative impact of new roads on bat populations was likely to be more far-reaching than realized.

She said: “This is important, as it means we could expect to see negative effects continue at a considerable distance from the road. We know that lower frequency road noise travels well beyond 50 metres — the scale at which ecological impact assessments are conducted.”

Dr. Henry Schofield, from Vincent Wildlife Trust, which jointly funded the research, said: “We have raised people’s awareness that bat species face barriers in the landscape that impede (妨碍) their ability to access suitable feeding areas and reduce their chances of survival. Along with habitat destruction and artificial lighting at night, this research has added road noise to the list of anthropogenic (人为的) factors reducing habitat quality for these protected species.”

5 . Before I went to Nature High Summer Camp, I didn't have many opinions about the environment-I _______ the environment was for other people to worry about. That _________didn't last long at the camp. I _______ learned about land use and forest management and started to _______ the world around me.

The person who _________ me most was Diane. She had worked in the _________ for twenty years and was by far the most _________ professional there. When she started talking, I hung on her every _________ and thought that everything she said made sense.

Diane _______ me by suggesting that putting out forest fires isn't ______________ a good thing-in fact, the cycle of nature makes it ______________ that fires take place because they clear out dead materials and enrich the ____________. Because the Forest Service put out all the fires in the past, the accumulation（堆积）of dead materials meant that a forest fire would grow bigger and consume______________.

Diane said that ______________ logging（伐木）would actually help the area because it would clear out the ______________ trees and allow new trees to grow. Diane added that luckily, necessary logging consumption had increased, which could ______________ the environment.

I've ______________ a lot from Diane. I ______________ that humans should protect the environment. There are other ______________ for us to do the environment a favor, such as planting trees, ______________Paper and recycling water.