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  3. For hundreds of millions of years, turtles(海龟) have struggled out of the sea to lay their eggs on sandy beaches, long before the

For hundreds of millions of years, turtles(海龟) have struggled out of the sea to lay their eggs on sandy beaches, long before the

admin2017-07-09  57
问题     For hundreds of millions of years, turtles(海龟) have struggled out of the sea to lay their eggs on sandy beaches, long before there were nature documentaries to celebrate them, or GPS satellites and marine biologists to track them, or volunteers to hand-carry the hatchlings (幼龟) down to the water’s edge lest they become disoriented by headlights and crawl towards a motel parking lot instead. A formidable wall of bureaucracy has been erected to protect their prime nesting sites on the Atlantic coastlines. With all that attention paid to them, you’d think these creatures would at least have the gratitude not to go extinct.
    But Nature is indifferent to human notions of fairness, and a report by the Fish and Wildlife Service showed a worrisome drop in the populations of several species of North Atlantic sea turtles, notably loggerheads(红海龟) , which can grow to as much as 400 pounds. The South Florida nesting population, the largest, has declined by 50% in the last decade, according to Elizabeth Griffin, a marine biologist with the environmental group Oceana. The figures prompted Oceana to petition the government to upgrade the level of protection for the North Atlantic loggerheads from "threatened" to "endangered"—meaning they are in danger of disappearing without additional help.
    Which raises the obvious question; what else do these turtles want from us, anyway? It turns out, according to Griffin, that while we have done a good job of protecting the turtles for the weeks they spend on land (as egg-laying females, as eggs and as hatchlings) , we have neglected the years they spend in the ocean. "The threat is from commercial fishing," says Griffin. Trawlers (which drag large nets through the water and along the ocean floor) and long-line fishers (which can deploy thousands of hooks on lines that can stretch for miles) take a heavy toll(损失) on turtles.
    Of course, like every other environmental issue today, this is playing out against the background of global warming and human interference with natural ecosystems. The narrow strips of beach on which the turtles lay their eggs are being squeezed on one side by development and on the other by the threat of rising sea levels as the oceans warm. Ultimately we must get a handle on those issues as well, or a creature that outlived the dinosaurs (恐龙) will meet its end at the hands of humans, leaving our descendants to wonder how a creature so ugly could have won so much affection.  
How does global warming affect the survival of turtles?
选项 A、It threatens the sandy beaches on which they lay eggs.
B、The changing climate makes it difficult for their eggs to hatch.
C、The rising sea levels make it harder for their hatchlings to grow.
D、It takes them longer to adapt to the high beach temperature.
答案A
解析 细节题。文章最后一段第二句指出，随着人类开发和海洋变暖而导致的海平面上升的威胁，海龟前往产卵的狭窄的海滩地带正遭到蚕食。由此可见，全球变暖将会导致海平面上升，继而破坏海龟的产卵环境——狭窄的海滩地带。所以A项为正确答案。
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