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Ten years ago, when environmental lawyer Kassie Siegel went in search of an animal to save the world, the polar bear wasn't at all an obvious choice. Siegel and Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity in Joshua Tree, Calif., were looking for a species whose habitat was disappearing due to climate change, which could serve as a symbol of the dangers of global warming. Her first candidate met the scientific criteria—it lived in ice caves in Alaska's Glacier Bay, which were melting away—but unfortunately it was a spider. You can't sell a lot of T-shirts with pictures of an animal most people would happily step on. Next, Siegel turned to the Kittlitz's murrelet, a small Arctic seabird whose nesting sites in glaciers were disappearing. In 2001, she petitioned the Department of the Interior to add it to the Endangered Species list, but Interior Secretary Gale Norton turned her down. Elkhorn and staghorn coral, which are threatened by rising water temperatures in the Caribbean, did make it onto the list, but as iconic species they fell short insofar as many people don't realize they're alive in the first place. The polar bear, by contrast, is vehemently alive and comes the undeniable charisma of a top predator. And its dependence on ice was intuitively obvious: it lives on it most of the year. But it took until 2004 for researchers to demonstrate that shrinking sea ice was a serious threat to the bears'population. On Feb. 16, 2005—the day the Kyoto Protocol to curb greenhouse gas emissions took effect, without the participation of the United States—Siegel petitioned to list polar bears as endangered. Three years later her efforts met with equivocal(不明确的)success, as Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne designated the bears as "threatened"(not endangered), a significant concession from an administration that has stood almost alone in the world in its reluctance to acknowledge the dangers of climate change. The Endangered Species Act(ESA), whose odd lists of snails and bladderworts sometimes seemed stuck in the age of Darwin, had been thrust into the mainstream of 21st-century environmental politics. Break out the T-shirts!
单选题1.Siegel and Cummings hoped to choose an animal to______.
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】细节题。第一段第二句说“Siegel and Brendan Cummings of the Center for Biological Diversity in Joshua Tree，Calif．，were looking for a species whose habitat was disappearingdue to climate change，which could serve as a symbol of the dangers of global warming．”即Siegel正在寻找一个由于气候变化而逐渐消失的物种，希望用它作为警示全球变暖危害的象征物。这样做的目的是号召人们与全球变暖作斗争。故选A。
单选题2.The problem with elkhorn and staghorn corals lies in that______.
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】细节题。第二段第三句说“Elkhorn and staghorn coral，which are threatened by rising wa—ter temperatures in the Caribbean，did make it onto the list，but as iconic species they fellshort in so far as many people don’t realize they’re alive in the first place．”小鹿角珊瑚和糜角珊瑚成功地被列入了濒危物种名单，但作为标志性物种还有欠缺，因为很多人并没有意识到珊瑚是活的动物。故选C。