Cambridge ielts 1-15 series reading answers explained

Key words: concentrate, causes
By skimming and scanning, we can find the emphasis on finding the causes of an animal‟s extinction 
in paragraph F. Particularly, Beth Shapiro prefers to “fully understand why various species went 
extinct in the first place”, where “understand why” could be understood as “concentrate on the 
causes”. Therefore, C is the answer. 
25. Answer: A
Key words: beneficial impact, vegetation
By looking for keywords that relate to “vegetation”, we could find the idea of this statement in 
paragraph D. Since the extinction of a species – the passenger pigeon – the forests where they used to 
live have become “stagnant”. Ben Novak explains how the return of the passenger pigeons to their 
forest habitat, with their nesting habits, would help “re-establish that forest disturbance, thereby 
creating a habitat necessary for a great many other native species to thrive”. As the “forest 
disturbance” conveys the same meaning as “impact on the vegetation”, it is once again confirmed that 
this statement is the idea of Ben Novak. Therefore, A is the answer. 

brought back = return(ed) 
 
26. Answer: C
Key words: efforts, preserving biodiversity, insufficient
“Preserving biodiversity” could be understood as preventing extinction in the first place, which is the 
idea of paragraph F, so we would look in this one. In this paragraph, Shapiro expresses how it is “far 
easier to try to save an existing species …”, and commented that “we know that what we are doing 
today is not enough” for this act of preserving biodiversity. 

current = today 

insufficient = not enough 
Therefore, this is the statement of Beth Shapiro,
so C is the answer.

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PASSAGE 3: