Should we be rewilding more land?

Every day in the US, 6,000 acres of open land are cleared for various purposes such as farming, housing, roads, and others. This has led to concerns among scientists 【小题1】 believe that losing more open land can harm the planet. Natural habitats such as untouched forests, grasslands, and waterways provide numerous benefits 【小题2】 wildlife habitats, clean water, and reduced air pollution. To counter this trend, efforts are underway 【小题3】 the world to return animals and plants to certain areas. However, some people argue that rewilding is 【小题4】 expensive and risky process that may not work and could cause harm.

Despite the potential risks, rewilding can help slow down climate change by restoring forests that absorb harmful gases like carbon dioxide. It can also prevent species from 【小题5】(die) out and reset natural ecosystems. For example, gray wolves 【小题6】(reintroduce) in Yellowstone National Park in 1995, after being hunted to extinction there. The wolves reduced the booming population of elks (麋鹿), 【小题7】 gave the plants the elks ate a chance to thrive and serve as habitat for animals like beavers and birds.

【小题8】 its environmental benefits, rewilding can also provide jobs for workers and scientists and attract visitors to an area. Despite the potential concerns and risks 【小题9】(associate) with rewilding, it is an important tool for protecting the planet and its diverse ecosystems. As such, efforts 【小题10】 be made to ensure that rewilding projects are conducted responsibly and with careful consideration of their potential impact on the environment.

Parental Instincts

Last year in early summer, I was walking up the hill to my house in suburban Brisbane when I saw two birds, each about 6 centimeters tall, standing in my driveway. They didn’t seem to notice me 【小题1】 I was right in front of them and then they immediately scattered into the nearby bushes.

I was quite excited by the idea of two special birds 【小题2】(make) a nest in my front yard, although I didn’t really expect them to as wild birds don’t usually nest so close.

A few weeks later, the birds reappeared. I found them crouching beside a tree off to the side of my driveway. As I approached them, I imagined that they’d run away like they did last time, but instead they 【小题3】(stick) out their heads and made a threatening croaking sound 【小题4】 came from deep inside their throats.

I did some research and found that the birds are burhinus grallarius(长尾石鸻). I still didn’t know【小题5】they were croaking at me until a short time later I made an amazing discovery: they 【小题6】(lay) two eggs which hatched into two small birds racing around now.

As I crept towards the birds, careful not to make any sudden movement, they started their croaking again, 【小题7】(stretch) their necks forwards so they seemed longer and more threatening.

I was watching them in awe when I suddenly tripped and fell to the ground. The birds took this 【小题8】 a threat and the father raced towards me, spreading his wings to shield the mother and the chicks while making 【小题9】 appear larger.

I was sorry 【小题10】(scare) them and left quickly.

I am amazed by their bold actions. Their parental instincts kicked in and made them so courageous. It is hard not to be awed by nature.

Hatching a theory

Just as dinosaurs characterized the cretaceous (白垩纪的) period, which ended with their extinction 66 million years ago, and mammals made up the Holocene (全新纪), which extends to the present day, many scientists believe we need to designate a new geologic age, called the Anthropocene, 【小题1】 reflects the impact of humankind on the planet. That raises the question: What will constitute 【小题2】 (noticeable) feature of the Anthropocene in the fossil record?

It’s likely to be chicken bones, according to a study by Carys Bennett, from the U.K.’s University of Leicester, and colleagues 【小题3】 (publish) last month in Royal Society Open Science.

Humans eat a lot of chicken, which means a lot of chicken bones are being buried, and many of them are likely to survive in fossilized form. According to Bennett’s paper, 65.8 billion chickens were killed globally in 2016, and 【小题4】 22.7 billion live birds await this fate today. The “biomass” of all poultry is 10 times greater than of all wild birds 【小题5】 (put) together.

We’re not just eating a lot of poultry; we’ve also put our mark on the birds themselves. 【小题6】 chicken consumption started taking off in the 1950s, the size and shape of the species—their skeleton, bone chemistry and genetics—have changed completely from their wild ancestors. The rapid growth of chicken’s leg and breast muscle means that its organs, including the heart and liver, are proportionally smaller. We 【小题7】 (shorten) the life span of broiler chickens, which can no longer survive without “intensive human intervention,” the authors write.

Because we engineered the species, and because it has become such a major feature of food consumption, it will 【小题8】 (consider) a marker of the Anthropocene, Bennett predicts. “The significance of the post-mid-20^th-century chicken is that it is the first really good example we have 【小题9】 what paleontologists (古生物学家) call a new “morphospecies”—that is, a distinctive kind of skeleton that【小题10】 be identified as a fossil—that appeared in the Anthropocene and became hugely abundant pretty well around the world,” she says. “In the future, humans will find and use chickens as a marker of our age.”