考研英语阅读理解中的文章，很多来自一些外刊杂志方面的题材。接下来，北京文都考研网为扩宽2020考研学子的知识面，整理了考研英语经济学人:地球100万物种正濒临灭绝!供考生参考。
2020考研英语经济学人:地球100万物种正濒临灭绝!
A new report confirms that life on Earth is in trouble
一份新的报告证实，地球上的生命陷入了困境
A million species may be at risk
100万物种濒临灭绝
A million species of animals and plants are threatened with extinction. Three-quarters of the world’s land and two-thirds of its marine environments have been “significantly altered” by human action. Urban areas have doubled in size in just the past 30 years.
地球上有100万种动植物正濒临灭绝。全球四分之三的陆地环境和三分之二的海洋环境已经因人类的活动而“显著改变”了。在过去的30年里，城市的面积增加了一倍。
More than 85% of wetlands have been lost. More than 90% of ocean fish stocks are being harvested at or above sustainable levels. These are among claims made in a report published on May 6th by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, a big international quango.
超过85%的湿地已经消失了。90%以上的海洋鱼类的捕捞量达到或超过了可持续水平。这些数据都是生物多样性和生态系统服务政府间科学政策平台(一个大型国际半官方机构)于5月6日发布的一篇报告中提出的。
The report, based on 15,000 research papers, makes grim reading. More than 40% of amphibians are threatened with extinction, as are a third of marine mammals, a third of sharks and a third of corals (a novel idea for the protection of which is described in the next story). Even 10% of the world’s insects are on the brink.
读起这份基于15000篇研究论文的报告着实令人沮丧。超过40%的两栖动物正濒临灭绝，三分之一的海洋哺乳动物、三分之一的鲨鱼和三分之一的珊瑚(下一篇文章描述了保护珊瑚的新想法)也濒临灭绝。此外，全球10%的昆虫也正濒临灭绝。
A cynic might suggest that 1m is a suspiciously headline-grabbing figure. It is, indeed, only a little short of the number of animal and plant species (around 950,000 and 200,000 respectively) currently recognised and described by science. And its accuracy depends on many assumptions. But it is probably not a bad guess.
愤世嫉俗者可能会认为这100万不过是头条新闻中为了吸人眼球的一个并不可靠的数值而已。的确，这一数值仅比目前科学界已经认识并加以描述的动物和植物物种的数量(分别约为95万和20万)略少一些。这一数值的准确性取决于许多假设。但它很有可能并不是一种胡乱的猜想。
A consensus is emerging of there being some 8m species of animals and plants (the report ignores bacteria, fungi and unicellular creatures like Amoeba).
如今科学界正在形成一种共识，即地球上现存大约800万种动植物(不包括细菌、真菌以及阿米巴等单细胞生物)。
Using figures from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which publishes an annual Red List of Threatened Species, the report’s authors looked at the proportion of threatened species in well-studied groups of organisms and extrapolated.
报告的作者利用国际自然保护联盟发布的年度濒危物种红色名录中的数据，对生物群体中濒危物种的比例进行了研究和推论。
In those groups, the IUCN reckons around a quarter of species are at risk of extinction. Many of the best-studied groups, however, are vertebrate animals, while most animals are invertebrates. Extrapolating from vertebrates to invertebrates is risky.
国际自然保护联盟估计，大约四分之一的物种存在着灭绝的危险。然而，被研究的最多的动物往往是一些脊椎动物，但实际上无脊椎动物的占比更大。以对脊椎动物的研究来推断无脊椎动物可能并不可靠。
The authors therefore made an exception for insects, the most speciose group (5.5m of the 8m purported species). For these they suggest 10% might be threatened with extinction—a figure in line with one derived by combining data on habitat degradation with the known relationship between habitat area and species numbers.
因此，作者通过另外的方法对昆虫做了推断，昆虫是种类最多的物种(在传说的800万物种中有550万是昆虫)。他们认为有10%的昆虫可能濒临灭绝——这一数值与通过栖息地面积和物种数量之间的已知关系推算出的数值相一致。
This suggests 9% of terrestrial animals (most of which are insects) are threatened with extinction. Add the figures up and a bit over 1m is what you get. Depressing.
这表明9%的陆栖生物正濒临灭绝。把这些数字加起来，你就能得出一个比100万多一点的数值了。多么令人沮丧啊。
【重难点词汇】
extinction [ɪk'stɪŋkʃən] n. 灭绝;消失;消灭;废止
wetland ['wɛtlənd] n. 湿地;沼泽地
harvest ['hɑrvɪst] n. 收获;产量;结果 vt. 收割;得到 vi. 收割庄稼
quango ['kwæŋɡo] n. 半官方机构;半独立国家的政府组织
amphibian [æm'fɪbɪən] n. 两栖动物;水陆两用飞机;具有双重性格的人 adj. 两栖类的;水陆两用的;具有双重性格的
cynic ['sɪnɪk] n. 愤世嫉俗者;犬儒学派的人 adj. 犬儒学派的
extrapolate [ɪk'stræpə'let] vt./vi. 外推;进行推断
vertebrate [ˈvɜrtəbrɪt] n. 脊椎动物 adj. 脊椎动物的;有脊椎的
terrestrial [tə'rɛstrɪəl] adj. 地球的;陆地的，陆生的;人间的 n. 陆地生物;地球上的人
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