Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 31 to 40.
Conservation often justifies novel tools on two instrumental grounds: efficiency and necessity. Efficiency says technologies help practitioners do the same work better – mapping, monitoring, curbing impacts – thereby refining decisions. Necessity says some tools are last resorts: without them, species or lineages fail. Many genomics projects fit one or both logics, from disease-resistant chestnuts to breeding programs steered by genetic data. [I] By contrast, de-extinction does not simply optimize or salvage recognized aims; it refocuses attention on fabricating close proxies of organisms no longer extant, inviting a different, more contested kind of evaluation.
Advocates of an interventionist future invoke the Anthropocene: humans have massively reshaped Earth’s systems, so stewardship must be proactive, even garden-like. The background conditions anchoring place-based protection – stable climate, predictable baselines – are eroding; hence, assisted colonisation or gene drives may be the responsible course when habitats shift irreversibly. [II] On this view, nostalgia is a poor guide; conservation should be forward-looking, managing rambling, human-touched ecologies rather than chasing an unrecoverable past. The ethical thrust is not whether to intervene, but how to govern intervention so species can persist amid durable anthropogenic change.
De-extinction sits awkwardly here: its techniques are novel, yet its goal is to reach back and reassemble what history has scattered. [III] Because ecological communities have moved on, habitats may be gone, relationships frayed, and released proxies could disrupt recipient systems. Moreover, genomes alone do not restore the relational values – ecological roles, cultural meanings, co-evolved dependencies – that make species significant. De-extinction, being backward-looking, rarely restores the value-grounding relationships that make species matter. This tension makes it harder to justify than tools that tackle causes directly, such as eliminating invasive vectors or enhancing diversity within still-extant, recovering populations.
Consequently, many urge prioritising scalable projects that address drivers – climate stress, pathogens, invasives – over spectacular revivals. Gene-drive suppression of disease-carrying mosquitoes for Hawaiʻian birds, or genomic cloning to widen black-footed ferret diversity, aims to repair functioning ties rather than stage returns. [IV] Proponents reply that de-extinction might occasionally yield ecological gains or spur useful innovation, but even sympathetic accounts concede its limited upside. What is worse is this deeper problem: our systems often lack a viable place for the vanished, so manufacturing likenesses neither cures the causes nor mends the entanglements they once sustained.
(Adapted from Hastings Center Report, Wiley Online, “A New Ethics for New Science?”)
Question 31. According to paragraph 1, the efficiency rationale claims novel tools ______.
A. help do existing conservation tasks more effectively without redefining objectives
B. replace field ecologists entirely through automation and remote sensing capabilities
C. create new species deliberately to expand biodiversity beyond historical baselines
D. force emergency relocations whenever monitoring identifies climate risks elsewhere emerging
Question 32. The word nostalgia in paragraph 2 mostly means ______.
A. keenly retrospective B. loosely prospective
C. vaguely operational D. mildly innovative
Question 33. Which of the following best summarises paragraph 2?
A. Human reshaping of Earth compels proactive stewardship that privileges forward-looking interventions over restorative nostalgia.
B. Long-term baselines remain stable, so conservation should concentrate on traditional protected-area management.
C. Because technology is risky, minimal interference is ethically superior to deliberate ecological engineering.
D. The Anthropocene proves de-extinction is essential whenever climate change alters historical habitats permanently.
Question 34. What is the passage’s stance on de-extinction relative to conventional goals?
A. It diverts effort from preserving extant species and complicates clear, outcome-oriented priorities.
B. It seamlessly integrates with efficiency logic by optimizing routine monitoring and mapping.
C. It necessarily prevents extinctions better than assisted colonisation in shifting environments.
D. It guarantees cultural restitution while fully restoring prior ecological dependencies.
Question 35. What do the gene-drive examples primarily aim to achieve?
A. address causes B. expand proxies
C. memorialise losses D. increase spectacle
Question 36. The phrase this deeper problem in paragraph 4 refers to ______.
A. habitat unsuitability B. root causes
C. technological limits D. funding scarcity
Question 37. Which of the following best paraphrases the underlined sentence in paragraph 3?
De-extinction, being backward-looking, rarely restores the value-grounding relationships that make species matter.
A. Given its retrospective orientation, proxy production infrequently reconstitutes relational matrices – ecological dependencies, cultural significances – that originally invested taxa with conservation salience.
B. Although temporally retrospective, de-extinction rapidly reconstructs ecological integration pathways species require, successfully restoring ancestral value propositions within contemporary ecosystem assemblages.
C. De-extinction generally fortifies relational value by strategically inserting genomic proxies readily assuming functionally identical roles, automatically reconstituting historical significance.
D. Orienting toward historical precedents ensures revived taxa automatically regain conservation significance because genetic verisimilitude guarantees comprehensive relational continuity and acceptance.
Question 38. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
A. Projects that directly mitigate drivers of decline are likelier conservation priorities than revivals that neither scale well nor repair underlying ecological linkages.
B. If nostalgia motivates communities, de-extinction will usually outperform gene drives in long-term biodiversity resilience and system-level stability outcomes.
C. As long as genomes are accurate, ecological relationships can be reliably reconstructed without comprehensive risk assessment or public deliberation.
D. De-extinction primarily exists to generate revenue, so it should replace conventional conservation finance in most jurisdictions.
Question 39. Where in the passage does the following sentence best fit?
Some advocates suggest aligning de-extinction with established translocation guidelines to manage risks and clarify purposes.
A. [I] B. [II] C. [III] D. [IV]
Question 40. Which of the following best summarises the passage?
A. De-extinction is innovative but largely misaligned with Anthropocene realities; scalable, cause-oriented interventions better serve conservation ethics and outcomes.
B. Because technology advances quickly, any genomic application automatically counts as necessary and efficient conservation.
C. Nostalgia should govern stewardship; the goal is to recreate historical assemblages wherever possible.
D. Gene drives are universally safe and should immediately replace all other conservation tools.