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Directions:
Read the following text. Choose the best word(s) for each numbered blank and mark A, B, C or D on the ANSWER SHEET. (10 points)
A decade ago biologists identified a remote protected area in northern Laos, called Nam Et-Phou Louey, as the country’s probable last haven for wild tigers. To formally 1 this supposition, researchers set up camera traps in 2013 and quickly 2 two tigers’ presence. 3 the success was short-lived: over their study’s four-year course, they never saw those or any other tigers again. This result proves that tigers are now functionally 4 in Laos.
The researchers also found that leopards, formerly presumed to still live in the park, have 5 as well. “For the remaining protected areas in Southeast Asia for tigers, this was an important one—maybe 6 a potential jewel in the crown,” says senior author David Macdonald, a wildlife conservationist at the University of Oxford. “To find that that jewel has blinked out is devastating.” Laos’s tiger loss is part of a(n) 7 trend across Southeast Asia; the animals have 8 disappeared from Vietnam and Cambodia. In almost every study site Macdonald and his colleagues have surveyed, wild tigers—which number fewer than 4,000 worldwide—are in steep 9 or completely absent. So are once 10 leopards.
Habitat loss is partly to 11 , but Macdonald says that the main 12 is “the astonishing, destructive tide of illegal hunting.” Akchousanh Rasphone from Oxford, and her colleagues installed and 13 300 camera stations across Nam Et-Phou Louey’s nearly 6,000 square kilometers of rugged, steep mountain ridges and 14 forest. Over four years they observed 43 mammal and bird species—but no leopards and, after 2013, no tigers.
Leading international non-profit groups support Laos’s efforts 15 illegal hunting in its main protected areas, but as in many other countries, 16 still find ways to kill wildlife. “These findings are not at all surprising,” says Ullas Karanth, a biologist at the Center for Wildlife Studies in Bengaluru. “There’s so much forest and so much 17 at this study site and throughout Southeast Asia, but without ground-level 18 against local people doing industrial-scale hunting, the wildlife will go.” Tigers can 19 in human-dominated landscapes: India has the world’s second highest human population, but it has prioritized tiger 20 and now hosts two thirds of the planet’s remaining wild tigers.
1. [A] track [B] test [C] assure [D] claim
2. [A] hunted [B] found [C] confirmed [D] shifted
3. [A] But [B] So [C] And [D] If
4. [A] present [B] alive [C] vivid [D] extinct
5. [A] endangered [B] run [C] vanished [D] survived
6. [A] only [B] still [C] thus [D] even
7. [A] increasing [B] decreasing [C] hopeful [D] alarming
8. [A] already [B] sometimes [C] never [D] seldom
9. [A] growth [B] decline [C] constant [D] fluctuation
10. [A] new [B] rare [C] strange [D] common
11. [A] blame [B] praise [C] speak [D] analyze
12. [A] expectation [B] victim [C] driver [D] result
13. [A] talked [B] monitored [C] appealed [D] argued
14. [A] flat [B] green [C] fresh [D] dense
15. [A] against [B] in [C] with [D] of
16. [A] farmers [B] hunters [C] assistants [D] researchers
17. [A] food [B] habitat [C] production [D] land
18. [A] jobs [B] weapons [C] reserves [D] protections
19. [A] sleep [B] disappear [C] thrive [D] preserve
20. [A] love [B] conservation [C] prevention [D] approach