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LISTENING PART 4 or mammals. Then there’s the role that insects play in crop production.
We use them to pollinate our fruit and vegetables, and it would be
impossible to manage without them. It’s also worth remembering that
Exam Practice scientists are now studying plants to find out whether they might be a
10 source of medicine in the future. If these plants disappear because of Q35
You will hear a student giving a presentation about the way that different insect extinction, that would be another lost opportunity.
insect species are being threatened. So, there’s some possible ways we could prevent insect extinction, some
Now listen carefully and answer questions 31 to 40. more controversial than others. I think it’s a given that governments have
to do something about the sale of pesticides; in fact, some countries
Student: So today I’m going to be talking about the way that different have already passed laws to ban certain products. That’s a good move
insect species are being threatened. In other words, the reasons why forward. But ordinary people can also make a difference. If we cut down Q36
some insect populations are declining – and might even become extinct on how much meat we ate, some of the land now used for grazing could
in the 21 century. I’ll also talk about the consequences – if extinction be turned back into insect-friendly environments.
st
occurs – and some possible ways to prevent that.
I’d like to finish with a positive story. There’s a place in California called
Let’s start with the reasons. First of all, when we look at what’s going on the Antioch Dunes. In the 1900s, people looked at the dunes and the
in Europe, we can see a huge decline in certain species of insect. This is sand that formed them and thought ‘that sand is a great raw material’.
partly because farmers no longer allow certain plants to grow in their And because they needed to build houses, they removed tons and tons Q37
Q31 fields. But farmers are not entirely to blame. The gardens that people of the sand and turned it into bricks. It wasn’t really until the 1960s that
have nowadays don’t always contain the kind of plant that insects need. biologists suddenly realised that the Antioch Dunes had actually been
So perhaps we need to rethink what we’re putting there. In more tropical home to some unique species of plant and insect. But by this time, there
regions of the world, for example, the Amazon rainforest, scientists have was only one species of butterfly left. The metalmark butterfly. And a
noticed that the number of beetle and butterfly species also appears major problem for the metalmark was that it required a certain plant
Q32 to be diminishing. They put this down to climate change, rather than to survive –something called the naked-stem buckwheat. It was on this Q38
say, the fragmentation of habitat – but more research has to be done. plant that it laid its eggs, so yes, you can see why the buckwheat was
And then, there’s the use of pesticide, and of course, this happens important. Well, in the end, the only way that the biologists could get the
everywhere in the world. Pesticide is designed to kill a range of insects buckwheat to start growing properly was to replace the sand. That was a
that farmers don’t like, but it also kills bees, which they need. Pesticide great first step, but the metalmark butterfly is still endangered.
might not kill bees directly, but we know that it impacts on their spatial
skills – meaning they cannot make sense of what they see around them – In the last decade, a significant number of butterflies and plants have Q39
Q33 and also their memory. This means that they cannot remember how to been destroyed in the Antioch Dunes by fire. So now, the biologists are
get back to their hive. limiting the number of visitors who can wander around the dunes. That’s
fair enough, I think. All right, the final point I want to make about the
So why worry about whether insects become extinct? Well, the project to restore the Antioch Dunes area is to do with how much land
consequences would obviously be terrible not just for them, but for us. is required: when we think about the concept of conservation we often
Pretty much everywhere on the planet, with the exception of Antarctica, assume we need to set aside a large amount of it. And that might be true
Q34 insects are at the bottom of the food chain. They’re absolutely vital, for some large species. But in this case, relatively little land was required. Q40
because if there were no insects, there would also be no birds or lizards But the important thing is to leave it undisturbed. OK...

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