Bring Back the Big Cats Reading Answers: IELTS Reading Practice Test

Bring Back the Big Cats Reading Passage

Paragraph A 

John Vesty says that the time for returning vanished native animals to Britain has arrived. Around 598 AD, there is a poem that describes the hunting of a mystery animal called Llewyn. What is it? Nothing got fitted until 2006, an animal bone was found in the Kinsey Cave in northern England, dating the same period. Until this discovery, the lynx, which is a large spotted cat with tassel-led ears, was assumed to have died in Britain at least 6000 years ago. It happens before the inhabitants of these islands do farming. But in 2006, in Yorkshire and Scotland, it is evident that the lynx and mysterious Llewyn both are the same. If so, the estimated extinction date of tassel-eared cats is 5000 years.

Paragraph B

However, in British culture, this is not the last glimpse of the animal. A 9th-century stone cross from the Isle of Eigg shows along the deer, pig, aurochs, a speckled cat with tasselled ears is pursued by a mounted hunter. We are sure that the animal’s backside hasn't been damaged over time as the lynx’s stubby tail is unmistakable. It’s difficult to know about the creature even without this feature. Now, lynx has become the totemic animal of a movement that transforms British environmentalism - rewilding. 

Paragraph C

Rewilding is the huge restoration of damaged ecosystems. It involves replacing the trees to areas that have been stripped, making seabed parts to recover from trawling and dredging and making rivers to freely flow. These things are to bring back the missing species. In modern ecology, one of the top findings is ecosystems without large predators which behave differently than those that retain them. Some drive dynamic processes that resonate the complete food chain and provide niches for hundreds of species that might struggle to survive. The killers will turn as life bringers.

Paragraph D

For British conservation, these findings give a great challenge, which is often selected as arbitrary assemblages of plants and animals by putting huge effort and investment to prevent them from changing. As the jar of pickles, it has preserved the living world by not letting anything in and out and keeping nature in an arrested state. But ecosystems are not only based on the collection of species, it also depends on the dynamic and changing relationship between them. The dynamism often varies based on the large predators.

Paragraph E

When it comes to sea, it is even greater, the larger areas of commercial fishing need to be protected. 18th century literature describes that the vast shoals of fish are chased by fin and sperm whales within sight of the English shore. This method will greatly increase catches in the surrounding seas; the fishing industry’s insistence on clearing every seabed without leaving any breeding reserves couldn’t be damaging to its own interests.

Paragraph F

Rewilding is one of the rare examples of environmental movement where campaigners communicate what they are for rather than what they are against. The reason for enthusiasm for rewilding is spreading fastly in Britain, is to create a more inspiring vision than the green movements’ promise of Follow us and the world will be less awful than it would be.

Paragraph G

There will be no threat to human beings by the lynx: there is no instance of a lynx preying on people. It is a specialist predator of roe deer that has exploded in Britain in recent decades which holds back the intensive browsing and planning to re-establish forests. It will also winkle out sika deer, an exotic species that is impossible for human beings to control as it hides in impenetrable plantations of young trees. Reintroducing this predator comes with the aim of bringing back the forests to the parts of our bare and barren uplands. The lynx needs deep cover thus giving little risk to sheep and other livestock which need to be in a condition of farm subsidies that are kept out of the woods.

Paragraph H

Several conservationists suggested that the lynx can be reintroduced within 20 years in the recent trip of the Cairngorm Mountains. If trees return to the bare hills anywhere in Britain, the big cats will follow. If it is seen from the perspective of anywhere else in Europe, there will be nothing extraordinary about the proposals. Now, the lynx has been reintroduced to the Mountains, Alps in eastern France and mountains in Germany and re-established in many places. Since 1970, the European population has tripled to nearly 10, 000. Like wolves, bears, pigs, bison, moose and other species, the lynx will spread as farming, left the hills and then people discover that it is much needed to protect wildlife than to hunt it as tourists will pay to see it. Large scale rewilding will happen everywhere except Britain.

Paragraph I
Here, there are many changes in attitudes. Conservationists started to accept the jar model is failing even on its own terms. Projects like Trees for life in the Highlands give hints of what is expected to come. There is an organisation set up that seeks to catalyse the rewilding of land and sea across Britain, its aim is to reintroduce the rarest species to British ecosystems: hope.

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