Next to snakes and crocs, Australians imagine sharks to be the country’s most dangerous creature. Tim Winton, an author, calls s

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问题     Next to snakes and crocs, Australians imagine sharks to be the country’s most dangerous creature. Tim Winton, an author, calls sharks "substitute for the Devil". Seven swimmers in three years have died from shark attacks in Mr. Winton’s home state of Western Australia. The state’s government, led by Colin Barnett, is now taking revenge.
    In late November a skilled surfer died from a shark attack. A week later a shark killed a 19-year-old in New South Wales. The tragedies fed public anxieties. Mr. Barnett ordered no-go zones for sharks to be set up offshore, marked by lines of baited hooks. Any shark caught on them more than three metres long was to be shot. The first shark caught in this strategy was shot on January 26th. Mr. Barnett says he has to "protect the people of Western Australia".
    But previously hostile popular attitudes towards sharks are shifting. Plenty of Western Australians , along with environmentalists and shark experts, deplore the new policy. In early January, at the height of the summer holiday season, more than 4,000 protesters swamped Cottesloe Beach in Perth, with signs reading "Save Our Sharks" and "Science Not Slaughter".
    Of Australia’s 180 or so shark species, only a few are dangerous to humans: chiefly, bull sharks, tiger sharks and great whites, which are protected under federal law. Their numbers have suffered from the trade in shark fins for soup in Asia, which Australia and others have banned. Nonetheless, the federal government has given its conservative counterpart in Western Australia an exemption from protecting great whites under its "catch-and-kill" policy.
    Despite the recent attacks, deaths from sharks are rare—an average of just one person a year for the past half-century around Australia’s vast coastline, says the Australian Shark Attack File, a research outfit at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. By contrast, an average of 120 people drown each year off beaches and in harbours and rivers. There has been no fatal shark attack at Bondi beach in Sydney, Australia’s most popular strand, since 1929.
Many Australians’ attitude towards the new policy is ______.

选项 A、doubtful
B、supportive
C、ambiguous
D、opponent

答案D

解析 根据题干的“Many Australians”,“new policy”等词定位到第三段。该段第一、二句指出:But previously hostile popular attitudes towards sharks are shifting. Plenty of Western Australians, along with environmentalists and shark experts, deplore the new policy. 大意为:但是之前人们普遍敌对鲨鱼的态度发生了转变。大量澳大利亚西部居民、环保主义者和鲨鱼专家强烈反对这项新政策。其中deplore这个词明确体现出许多澳大利亚人的态度,如果看不懂这个词,可以根据上下文进行猜测。上文提到人们敌对鲨鱼的观点正在转变,下文提到人们不敌对鲨鱼,反而反对“杀戮鲨鱼的新政策”,由此可见“deplore”这个词和上文的“hostile(敌对的)”一词是接近的,故答案为D,opponent(反对的)。
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