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  3. If it were simply a matter of passing strong laws to protect it, the Amazon rainforest—the world’s largest tropical forest, arou

If it were simply a matter of passing strong laws to protect it, the Amazon rainforest—the world’s largest tropical forest, arou

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问题     If it were simply a matter of passing strong laws to protect it, the Amazon rainforest—the world’s largest tropical forest, around the size of Western Europe—would be safe. Brazil, whose territory includes about two-thirds of the forest, has impressively tough laws that, on paper, set most of it aside as a nature reserve and impose stiff penalties for illegal logging. But the latest annual figures for deforestation (砍伐森林) in the Brazilian Amazon have confirmed a disturbing recent trend: the destruction is accelerating despite ail efforts to curb it. In the year 2004, more than 26000 square kilometers of forest were chopped down, an area larger than the American state of New Jersey.
    The area deforested in the past year was up 6% in 2003, far worse than the Brazilian government’s predictions that it would rise by no more than about 2%. It had been the second worst year for the destruction of the rainforest since satellite surveys began. It is reckoned that almost a fifth of the Brazilian part of the forest has now been wiped out; if it were to continue at this rate, it would all be flattened within the next two centuries. Worse, tropical forests have been disappearing at an even faster rate elsewhere in the world, such as in Africa. The world’s greatest stores of biodiversity—and some of its main suppliers of the oxygen we breathe—are still being chewed up at an alarming rate, despite decades of talk among world leaders and environmentalists about the need to preserve them.
    As has been seen before in Brazil, the surge in the rate of deforestation is a sign that the country’s economy is booming—recently it has been growing at an annual rate around 5%. Most of the timber felled illegally in Amazon is sold to domestic buyers, in particular to the construction industry in Brazil’s richer southern states. But the forest is also threatened by the rapid expansion of farming and ranching.
    The rate at which the forest is being flattened could easily rise further. To boost the region’s economic development, the government plans to widen the BR-163 highway that slices the forest roughly in half, running from north to south. Though the government has been working with environmental groups and others to try to limit the scheme’s impact, past experience has shown that improved road access invariably means more intruding on the forest by loggers, ranchers, farmers, mineral prospectors and others.
What causes the deforestation and threatens the existence of Amazon forest?
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答案Construction industry/Expansion of farming and ranching
解析 参看第三段最后两句话“Most of the timber felled illegally in Amazon is sold to domestic buyers，in particular to the construction industry in Brazil’s richer southern states．But the forest is also threatened by the rapid expansion of farming and ranching．”，由此可知在富有的巴西南方各州建筑业的发展和农场与牧场的扩大正威胁着巴西的森林。
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