Yukon: Canada's Wild West

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. 2^nd edition. Reading and Use of English Part 7 Test 2. Cambridge University Press: Dubai. Pages 83 and 84.