2019年1月17日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：The Forgotten Forest

2019年1月17日雅思阅读真题+题目+答案：The Forgotten Forest

Found only in the Deep South of America, longleafpine woodlands have dwindled to about 3 percent of their former range, but new efforts are under way to restore them.

THE BEAUTY AND THE BIODIVERSITY of the longleaf pine forest are well-kept secrets, even in ：its native South. Yet it is among the richest ecosystems in North America, rivaling tallgrass prairies and the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest in the number of spedes it shelters. And like : those two other disappearing wildlife habitats, longleaf is also critically endangered.

In longleaf pine forests, trees grow widely scattered, creating an open, parklike environment, more like a savanna than a forest. The trees are not so dense as to block the sun. This openness r creates a forest floor that is among the most diverse in the world, where plants such as many-flowered grass pinks, trumpet pitcher plants, Venus flytraps, lavender ladies and pineland bog- ! buttons grow. As many as 50 different spedes of wildflowers, shrubs, grasses and ferns have been I cataloged in just a single square meter.

Once, nearly 92 million acres of longleaf forest flourished from Virginia to Texas, the only place in the world where it is found. By the turn of the 21st century, however, virtually all of it had i been logged, paved or farmed into oblivion. Only about 3 percent of the original range still supports longleaf forest, and only about 10,000 acres of that is uncut old-growth-the rest is forest j that has regrown after cutting. An estimated 100,000 of those acres are still vanishing every year. ! However, a quiet movement to reverse this trend is rippling across the region. Governments, i private organisations (including NWF) and individual conservationists are looking for ways to ; protect and preserve the remaining longleaf and to plant new forests for future generations.

Figuring out how to bring back the piney woods also will allow biologists to help the plants ; and animals that depend on this habitat. Nearly two-thirds of the declining threatened or I endangered spedes in the southeastern United States are associated with longleaf. The outright destruction of longleaf is only part of their story, says Mark Danaher, the biologist for South Caro- v lina's Francis Marion National Forest. He says the demise of these animab and plants also is tied j to a lack of fire, which once swept through the southern forests on a regular basis. "Fire is absolutely critical for this ecosystem and for the species that depend on it," says Danaher. !

Name just about any spedes that occurs in longleaf and you can find a connection to fire. Bach- j man's sparrow is a secretive bird with a beautiful song that echoes across the longleaf flatwoods.It tucks its nest on the ground beneath clumps of wiregrass and little bluestem in the open under-story. But once fire has been absent for several years, and a tangle of shrubs starts to grow, the sparrows disappear Gopher tortoises, the only native land tortoises east of the Mississippi, are also abundant in longleaf. A keystone species for these forests, its burrows provide homes and safety to more than 300 species of vertebrates and invertebrates ranging from eastern diamond- back rattlesnakes to gopher frogs. If fire is suppressed, however, the tortoises are choked out. "If we lose fire", says Bob Mitchell, an ecologist at the Jones Center, "we lose wildlife."

Without fire, we also lose longleaf. Fire knocks back the oaks and other hardwoods that can grow up to overwhelm longleaf forests. They are fire forests," Mitchell says. "They evolved in the lightning capital of the eastern United States."And it wasn't only lightning strikes that set the forest aflame. '"Native Americans also lit fires to keep the forest open," Mitchell says. "So did the early pioneers. They helped create the longleaf pine forests that we know today."

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