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  3. The population of African forest elephants plummeted 62% in the past decade.

The population of African forest elephants plummeted 62% in the past decade.

游客2024-02-04  16
问题     The population of African forest elephants plummeted 62% in the past decade. The figure comes as policymakers discuss ways to curb the ivory market at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora(CITES)meeting.
    Forest elephants, which often live closer to human populations, have been particularly hard-hit by ivory poachers. After declines in the elephant population last century, a 1989 international ban on ivory initially led to signs of a resurgence in the animals. Since then, anecdotal evidence and surveys taken in individual parks suggested that heightened demand for ivory in China has once again led an uptick in elephant slaughters.
    To get a more complete picture, Maisels and a team of 60 researchers from around the world helped coordinate and assemble data from 80 individual surveys taken from 2002 through 2011 in central African locales. When the team crunched(进行大量运算)the numbers, it found that just during the 10-year span covered in the new surveys, the elephant population declined by 62% and the land area inhabited by elephants dropped by 30%. Areas lacking guards, closest to roads and in countries with high levels of corruption had the most elephant population decline.
    These numbers are a bit conservative. Because many of the surveys took place in protected areas, they could overestimate elephant populations—elephants often flee into the protected zones to escape nearby poaching.
    Estimates on the absolute population of elephants at any given time must be taken with a grain of salt, but overall trends seen over years of sampling the same areas in a standardized way are generally more accurate.
    The new numbers are not surprising to conservationists who work in the area, but are needed to convince others of the problems and provide a starting point to see the effect of future conservation efforts.
    The challenge now is for those countries represented at the CITES meeting, to put together new policies to curb the ivory trade. The key will be to stop the trade within China, lowering the demand for ivory and the price. Previous programs aimed at this aspect of the market have been more successful than those specifically aiming to stop the poaching. [br] What does "be taken with a grain of salt"(Para. 5)exactly mean?
选项 A、Be doubtful.
B、Be serious.
C、Be confused.
D、Be salty.
答案 A
解析 语义理解题。定位段是由but连接的两个分句，后半句跟前半句是转折的关系，该短语出现在第一个分句中，后半句提到，连续多年用一个标准的方式采集同一地区的样本，所得到的总趋势通常更准确，说明前面的这种方式调查出的数据是有待考究的．故正确答案为A)。
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