Vocabulary

2. lush-розкішний (про рослинність)

3. logging-вирубка

4. to obliterate-знищувати

5. measures-заходи

6. deforestation-знищення лісів

7. to cut down-вирубати

8. to endow-забезпечувати; надавати право

9. loss-збитки

10. heritage-спадщина

11. depletion-виснаження

12. immense-величезний

13. clear-cutting-прорідження лісів

14. carbon dioxide-вуглекислий газ

15. barren-порожній; неплодючий

16. desert-пустеля

17. accumulation-накопичення

18. to recycle-піддавати вторинній обробці

19. nutrient-поживний

20. decimation-спустошення

21. benefit-користь

1 Comprehension Questions:

1. How does the rate of deforestation vary from one country to the next?

2. Why is the loss of tropical rain forests one of the most serious problems?

3. Are tropical rain forests receiving protection?

4. What does global deforestation account for?

2 Match the following words and definitions:

pace an action used to obtain a particular result

measure a rate of walking or running

to obliterate to use up, empty until little or none remains

to deplete nearness in space

vicinity to remove all signs of something

3 Choose the right answer:

1 How many hectares of tropical rain forests are cut down each year?

a) 10 million; b) 11 million; c) 9 million; d) 20 million.

2 What is a source of new drugs to battle diseases?

a) wild species; b) tropical forests; c) selective cutting;

d) agricultural lands.

4 Find the English equivalents of the following words:

відрізнятись, значною мірою, відкриття, руйнувати, ліки, вуглець, негайний, поступовий, місце, збільшувати.

5 Define the tense forms of the verbs and put them into the Infinitive. Translate the sentences into Ukrainian.

1. Global deforestation today accounts for 25% of the world’s annual increase in carbon dioxide.

2. About 11 hectares of tropical forests are cut down each year.

3.Tropical soils are generally nutrient poor.

6 Put four types of questions to each sentence.

1. The world includes a tremendous variety of living things.

2. The study of ecology increases our understanding of the world and its life.

7 Discussion Points. Do you agree or disagree to the following statements? Specify your answer and give your reasons.

1. Tropical forests have been reduced by half. What would you do to change the situation?

2. The ways of preserving of the earth’s evolutionary heritage.

3. The loss of tropical rain forests is one of the most serious problems facing the world today.

Pre-reading task.

1 Talk to another student. What do you know about these places?

The Himalayas

Bangladesh

The Sudan

The Amazon Jungle

David Attenborough knows the world better than most people. He has spent much of the last seven years globe-trotting for his hugely successful television programmes Life on Earth and The Living Planet.

But his next series might well be named The End of Life on the Dying Planet. David Attenborough is very gloomy about much of what he had seen.

David Attenborough talks about the places mentioned above. What do you think is happening in these places that make him “gloomy”

І = interviewer

A = David Attenborough

I David Attenborough is very gloomy about much of what he has seen. What’s depressed him most has been the huge speed and scale of change that human beings are inflicting on the world. A powerful symbol of the change is the simple act of felling trees.

A In the Himalayas, for example, people cut down forests simply because there are an awful a lot of people who need firewood to keep warm. And so they cut down the huge hillsides, in a few years… are stripped of their forests.

I This leaves fertile Himalayan hills naked, unprotected from the heavy rains. The trees were umbrellas, but now the rain washes out the good soil, which ends up as mud a thousand miles away in the channels of the river Ganges.

A When the next rains come, instead of the forests on the hillside holding the rains and letting it out a bit at a time as though it were a sponge, the forest isn’t there, so the rain water runs straight off and when it goes down in a huge flood; and it gets into the channels which are clogged with mud, so it then floods, so then the whole area is under water, people loose their farm land and people drown.

I So cutting down trees in Nepal drowns people in Bangladesh. In Africa the gathering of wood is making the desert grow.

A In parts of the Sudan, the desert in just 15 years has advanced sixty miles. And it’s a devastating statistic and what’s more, it’s a heart-breaking one, because how can you go to these people and say, “You mustn’t cut down that tree in order to cook your food”?

I But is it universally so bad? Or are some environmentalists just getting into a flap about isolated, extreme examples? David Attenborough used to wonder that, too.

A I remember very well flying over the Amazonian jungle for hour after hour and not a sign of the handoff man beneath me, just the green carpet of trees. And I said to myself, “It can’t be true, it can’t be true that this will disappear by the end of the century”. And so I looked into the question as to how people made these estimates. I mean, I thought, was it one of these things where you suddenly multiplied one statistic by 500,000 and you get an extraordinary answer? The fact of the matter is that those statistics are based on surveys by satellites with infra-red cameras which actually measure the change of a patch of green leaves into a patch of bare ground. And even on that level the rate at which the jungle is being destroyed amounts to about 29,000 square miles a year.

I That’s an area the size of the whole of Scotland disappearing every year. Trees are vital part of the water cycle, and of course they give us the oxygen that we breathe. And cutting down the rain forests kills the plants beneath the trees as well; plants, which help us, fight disease.

A Forty per cent of our drugs, our medicines, are derived from plants and most of those come from the tropical rain forests, and most of those come from the Amazon.

I Those plants also help fight the diseases that threaten our food. The funguses and moulds that attack wheat, for example, are continually growing stronger. But they only evolve to match specific varieties of wheat. So plant breeders beat the funguses by changing the varieties.

A What does a plant breeder need to change a variety? Answer – new genes. Where do they come from? Answer-wild plants. That happens with all our food plants. With rice, with potatoes, with wheat, with barley, all that applies. And if we lose those wild strains, we could well be…devast…I mean the field could be devastated and mankind would starve.

I David Attenborough insists that none of what he’s said is exaggeration. It’s not just a distant problem somewhere on the other side of the world.

A What we’re talking about is the survival of human beings, of men, women and children. It is happening now. The floods that we hear of in India and Pakistan, the starvation that we hear of in parts of Africa, these aren’t accidents. These are direct consequences of what we are talking about. And the tragedy is that the people who suffer first are the deprived people, the people who are living on the edge of prosperity. And, but if we think that we are insulated from that, that it’s always going to be them, we are wrong. They are the start. As sure as fate, they are coming our way.

I David Attenborough’s thoughts after seven years of traveling around the world.

Comprehension check

1 Why are the forests cut down in the Himalayas?

2 “The trees were umbrellas”. What does this mean?

3 What happens to the soil without trees?

4 How are floods caused in Bangladesh?

5 What is the “devastating statistic” about the desert in the

Sudan?

6 Why does David Attenborough call it a “heart-breaking”

statistic?

7 Why did he not believe at first that the Amazon jungle

could disappear?

8 How are statistics about the disappearing jungle made?

9 How much jungle is being destroyed every year?

10 Why are the plants in tropical rain forests important to

us?

What do you think?

1 David Attenborough’s last words in the interview are “They are coming our way”

What do you understand by this?

2 What are some of the future possibilities that David Attenborough is afraid of?

Example

There might be no more tropical plants.