You are going to read an extract
from a magazine article. Six paragraphs have been removed from the extract.
Choose from the paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (41-46). There is
one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
Yukon: Canada's Wild West
A modern-day minerals rush
threatens one oi North America's last great wildernesses
Shawn Ryan recalls the hungry
years, before his first big strike. The prospector and his family were living
in the Yukon, in a metal shack on the outskirts of Dawson, the Klondike
boomtown that had declined to a ghostly remnant of its glory days. They had
less than $300 and no running water or electricity. One night, as wind sneaked
through gaps in the walls , Ryan's wife, Cathy Wood, worried aloud that they
and their two children might even freeze to death.
41.-_____
The minerals rush has reanimated
Dawson's bars and hostels, whose facades glow in pastel hues during midsummer's
late-night sunset. The scene could be from more than a century ago, with
bearded men bustling along wooden sidewalks and muddy streets, stopping to chat
and trade rumors of the latest strikes and price spikes.
42.-_____
It's well worth that investment
in technology and people . The claim-staking boom may have cooled since the
price of gold has stabilized, but an ongoing high demand for minerals and the
Yukon's industry-friendly regulations continue to attract mining companies from
as far away as China. Shawn Ryan's business is as successful as any of them.
43.-_____
In his small office , radios and
bear-spray canisters surround a trio of computer screens atop a plywood table.
A self-taught geologist, Ryan uses the left-hand screen to display the colored
maps he generates from his ever-growing database of soil samples, looking for
anomalies that might betray a hidden body of precious ore. On the center
sereen, a blue grid overlays a map of the Yukon, showing the claims he
currently owns; since 1996, he and his crews have staked more than 55,000
claims, enough to cover a landmass larger than Jamaica. Ryan uses the
right-side screen to track his gold-related holdings, which notch up in value
whenever an economic jolt sends investors fleeing to precious metals.
44.-_____
Trish Hume, for example, has
expressed concern. Though she is involved in mapping work that's mining
related, she worries that the Yukon is reaching a tipping point where the
environmental and cultural costs of mining outweigh the benefits. "The
people coming up and taking out minerals aren't asking what happens to the
animals we hunt, the fish we eat, the topsoil that holds it all together. And
when the boom is over, how does our tiny population afford to c1ean up the
toxic mess?" The population is small, but the area of the Yukon is
enormous.
45.-_____
Walled off by some of the
country's highest peaks and largest glaciers, the territory is almost
completely unsettled, its sparse population scattered over a few small
communities and the capital, Whitehorse. It is also rich in wildlife, an Arctic
safari park whose extreme seasonal shifts beckon vast herds of caribou and
other animals into motion.
46.-_____
It is crucial that such a
remarkable environment, as this c1early is, is not lost for ever, destroyed by
the businesses anxious to exploit its mineral wealth for their own ends.
A.-
It is even larger than the state
of California, but with only 37,000 inhabitants, it drives an immense wedge
between Alaska and the bulk of Canada. From its north coast, the Yukon
stretches to the south and south-east, taking in tremendous expanses of
lake-dotted tundra, forests, mountains, wetlands, and river systems.
B.-
At his expanding compound at the
edge of town, helicopters thump overhead, fetching GPS-equipped prospectors to
and from remote mountain ridges. Ryan F is 50 years old, but he radiates the
eagerness and intensity of a much younger mano "This is the biggest geochemical
exploration project on the planet right now," he says, his grin revealing
a couple of missing upper teeth, "and maybe in history."
C.-
Today, the couple could buy-and
heat-just about any house on Earth. Ryan's discovery of what would eventually
amount to billions of dollars' worth of buried treasure has helped reinfect the
Yukon with gold fever, and fortune seekers have stormed the Canadian territory
in numbers not seen since the 1890s.
D.-
In contrast, the Yukon's early
inhabitants hunted bison, elk, caribou, woolly mammoths, waterfowl, and fish,
and they competed for resources with carnivores such as wolves and Beringian
lions. Due to c1imate warming and other factors, some of these animals died
off. But others, such as the barren-ground caribou, thrived in such numbers
that native peoples adapted their own movements and lifestyles to the animals'
migrations.
E.-
Such creatures are especially to
be found in the Peel watershed, an immense wilderness which drains an area
larger than Scotland. "The Peel watershed is one of the few places left
where you still have large, intact predator-prey ecosystems," says a
representative of the Yukon Conservation Society. "From wolves and
grizzlies and eagles on down, it's a wildlife habitat of global importance."
F.-
As the material needs of the
world's seven billion people continue to grow, the rush to exploit the Yukon's
exceptionally rich resources-gold, zinc, copper, and more- has brought
prosperity to a once forsaken corner of the continent. But the boom has brought
to the fore a growing tension between those who would keep one of North
America's last great wildernesses unbroken and those whose success depends on
digging it up.
G.-
But in other ways, things are
different now. During the first Klondike stampede, prospectors plied nearby
creeks with picks and pans and shovels, and a bartender could sweep up a small
fortune in spilled gold dust at the end of a big night. Nowadays, mining's
heavy lifting is done by a mechanized army of bulldozers, drilling rigs, and
flown-in workers.
O’Dell, Felicity (2015) Advanced
Trainer. 2nd edition. Reading and Use of English Part 7 Test 2.
Cambridge University Press: Dubai. Pages 83 and 84.
