北美考区2016年11月新SAT写作试题

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1 Like canaries in the coal mine, declining bird populations across America’s grasslands are early warning indicators of much bigger ecosystem disruptions that affect us all. The birds are still singing to us, but they are doing so in greatly reduced numbers. They’re telling us that we need to do more, not less, to protect their precious habitats on our farms and ranches.

2 Over the past four decades, many birds once common in U.S. farmlands have become uncommon. The clear whistles of the Eastern Meadowlark ringing across a pasture are being silenced, as their population has plummeted 70 percent since 1970. The same is true for the diminutive and mysterious Henslow’s Sparrow — a prairie bird whose population may be down as much as 95 percent since the mid-1960s.

3 Yet, bright spots exist for both species, where local subpopulations are rebounding. In Illinois, recent spring counts of Henslow’s Sparrows are more than 25 times greater than they were in 1985. There is no mystery to these bright spots: The difference has been the farm bill’s Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), which pays landowners an annual per-acre fee to allow cropland to go fallow and then helps with the conversion to grassland. Henslow’s Sparrow counts are highest in Illinois counties with the most reserve program acreage.

4 The farm bill is not only important in helping our nation’s farmers produce food; it is also the biggest source of conservation incentives for private landowners. In addition to encouraging more grasslands, the incentives include paying some landowners to grow crops or graze cattle in a more sustainable manner. And as is shown in the recently published report “The State of the Birds 2013,” which we and several others helped compile, these conservation incentives work.

5 Private farmlands provide critical bird habitat, with 80 percent of the populations of 29 vulnerable grassland-breeding bird species distributed across private lands. In the Prairie Pothole Region of the upper Midwest, farm bill CRP lands have produced a 30 percent increase in waterfowl breeding over the past two decades. Out west, the Sage Grouse Initiative has partnered with more than 700 ranchers to improve bird habitat on more than 2 million acres in 11 states, while promoting more nutritious grasses for grazing cattle.

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