5 . Once there were many thousands of Gourma Desert (沙漠) elephants in Mali, a country in West Africa. Now, there are fewer than four hundred.
Why did the number of the elephants drop so quickly? On the one hand, the elephants’ main lake, their only water source (来源), dried up. On the other hand, the land which the elephants lived on was overused by humans.
To protect the elephants’ living environment, the Mali Elephant Project (MEP) was started in 2007. MEP met with local people and helped them make rules of using land and water. As a result, the situation became better and there was more food, forest and grassland.
However, from 2012 to 2016, poaching (偷猎) and illegal trade in the elephants increased rapidly. Eighty-three elephants were lost in 2015 alone, and another fifty-one elephant were killed in 2016. “If this situation goes on, all the Gourma elephants will be killed by 2020,” said a member of MEP.
Luckily, the voice of MEP was heard. More organizations (组织) have joined together to educate the local people that trading elephants is against the law. Elephant poaching has dropped to a very low level. The local people have learned to live peacefully with the elephants, one of the wildlife treasures in the world.
1. MEP was started to ________.
| A．raise more elephants in Mali | B．stop the main lake from drying up |
| C．discover water source for elephants | D．protect the elephants’ living environment |
2. What does the word “illegal” in Paragraph 4 mean in Chinese?
3. Eighty-three elephants were lost ________.
| A．in 2012 | B．in 2015 | C．in 2016 | D．in 2020 |
4. We can learn from the last paragraph that ________.
| A．the number of organizations has dropped | B．there is much less elephant poaching now |
| C．the local people keep the elephants at home | D．the whole world live peacefully with elephants |
