Bring Back the Big Cats — Test 8, Passage 2
IELTS_ACADEMIC · Ielts Reading Passage · Cambridge IELTS 12 Academic, Cambridge University Press
You should spend about 20 minutes on this passage.
IELTS_READING_MULTIPLE_CHOICE
What did the 2006 discovery of the animal bone reveal about the lynx?
Its physical appearance was very distinctive.
Its extinction was linked to the spread of farming.
It vanished from Britain several thousand years ago.
It survived in Britain longer than was previously thought.
What point does the writer make about large predators in the third paragraph?
Their presence can increase biodiversity.
They may cause damage to local ecosystems.
Their behaviour can alter according to the environment.
They should be reintroduced only to areas where they were native.
What does the writer suggest about British conservation in the fourth paragraph?
It has failed to achieve its aims.
It is beginning to change direction.
It has taken a misguided approach.
It has focused on the most widespread species.
Protecting large areas of the sea from commercial fishing would result in
practical benefits for the fishing industry.
some short-term losses to the fishing industry.
widespread opposition from the fishing industry.
certain changes to techniques within the fishing industry.
According to the author, what distinguishes rewilding from other environmental campaigns?
Its objective is more achievable.
Its supporters are more articulate.
Its positive message is more appealing.
It is based on sounder scientific principles.
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
There would be many advantages to reintroducing the lynx to Britain. While there is no evidence that the lynx has ever put ___ in danger, it would reduce the numbers of certain ___ whose populations have increased enormously in recent decades. It would present only a minimal threat to ___ , provided these were kept away from lynx habitats. Furthermore, the reintroduction programme would also link efficiently with initiatives to return native ___ to certain areas of the country.
IELTS_READING_SUMMARY_COMPLETION
trees
endangered species
hillsides
wild animals
humans
farm animals
Complete the summary using the list of words and phrases, A–F, below. Write the correct letter, A–F, for each answer.
Reintroducing the lynx to Britain
IELTS_READING_YES_NO_NOT_GIVEN
NO
Britain could become the first European country to reintroduce the lynx.
NOT GIVEN
The large growth in the European lynx population since 1970 has exceeded conservationists' expectations.
YES
Changes in agricultural practices have extended the habitat of the lynx in Europe.
YES
It has become apparent that species reintroduction has commercial advantages.
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 2? Write YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer, NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer, or NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.
There is a poem, written around 598 AD, which describes hunting a mystery animal called a llewyn. But what was it? Nothing seemed to fit, until 2006, when an animal bone, dating from around the same period, was found in the Kinsey Cave in northern England. Until this discovery, the lynx – a large spotted cat with tasselled ears – was presumed to have died out in Britain at least 6,000 years ago, before the inhabitants of these islands took up farming. But the 2006 find, together with three others in Yorkshire and Scotland, is compelling evidence that the lynx and the mysterious llewyn were in fact one and the same animal. If this is so, it would bring forward the tassel-eared cat's estimated extinction date by roughly 5,000 years.
However, this is not quite the last glimpse of the animal in British culture. A 9th-century stone cross from the Isle of Eigg shows, alongside the deer, boar and aurochs pursued by a mounted hunter, a speckled cat with tasselled ears. Were it not for the animal's backside having worn away with time, we could have been certain, as the lynx's stubby tail is unmistakable. But even without this key feature, it's hard to see what else the creature could have been. The lynx is now becoming the totemic animal of a movement that is transforming British environmentalism: rewilding.
Rewilding means the mass restoration of damaged ecosystems. It involves letting trees return to places that have been denuded, allowing parts of the seabed to recover from trawling and dredging, permitting rivers to flow freely again. Above all, it means bringing back missing species. One of the most striking findings of modern ecology is that ecosystems without large predators behave in completely different ways from those that retain them. Some of them drive dynamic processes that resonate through the whole food chain, creating niches for hundreds of species that might otherwise struggle to survive. The killers turn out to be bringers of life.
Such findings present a big challenge to British conservation, which has often selected arbitrary assemblages of plants and animals and sought, at great effort and expense, to prevent them from changing. It has tried to preserve the living world as if it were a jar of pickles, letting nothing in and nothing out, keeping nature in a state of arrested development. But ecosystems are not merely collections of species; they are also the dynamic and ever-shifting relationships between them. And this dynamism often depends on large predators.
At sea the potential is even greater: by protecting large areas from commercial fishing, we could once more see what 18th-century literature describes: vast shoals of fish being chased by fin and sperm whales, within sight of the English shore. This policy would also greatly boost catches in the surrounding seas; the fishing industry's insistence on scouring every inch of seabed, leaving no breeding reserves, could not be more damaging to its own interests.
Rewilding is a rare example of an environmental movement in which campaigners articulate what they are for rather than only what they are against. One of the reasons why the enthusiasm for rewilding is spreading so quickly in Britain is that it helps to create a more inspiring vision than the green movement's usual promise of 'Follow us and the world will be slightly less awful than it would otherwise have been.'
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