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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

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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.
What does the author mean by "Nature is indifferent to human notions of fairness" (Line 1, Para. 2)?
选项 A、Nature is quite fair regarding the survival of turtles.
B、Turtles are by nature indifferent to human activities.
C、The course of nature will not be changed by human interference.
D、The turtle population has decreased in spite of human protection.
答案D
解析 语义题。第二段第一句是由and连接的并列句，所以可以通过后半句来推断前半句的意思。第一段后半部分提到了人们对于保护海龟所采取的措施和乐观看法，第二段开头使用连词but进行转折，意义应该与第一段相反或相对；同时，第二段第一句后半句指出，美国鱼类和野生动物服务组织的报告表明，北大西洋地区的许多种海龟已经出现了数量下降的令人担忧的局面。综合以上分析，可以推断，第一句前半句的意思为：大自然似乎不大在意人类的美好理想，换句话说，虽然人们做出努力来保护海龟，但是其数量仍然在下降。所以D项为正确答案。
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