Huge wildlife rescue operation launched
Geoffrey Lean detailsof far-reaching plans to save over 100 species
1.1.Study the vocabulary:
| · wildlife живая природа · launch запускать · endangered подверж.опасности · to hail приветствовать · set targets ставить цель · otters выдра · water voles полевка(мышь) · skylark жаворонок · song thrush дрозд · medicinal leeches пиявки | · slipper orchid домашняя орхидея · crested newt тритон · dormouse соня · river mussel мидия · habitats среда обитания · become extinct вымирать · mouse-eared bat летучая мышь · beetle жук |
2.Read and translate the text:
Unprecedented plans to save more than 100 of Britain's most endangered animals and plants are to be launched by the Government, with the backing of the Prince of Wales.
The plans, which are being hailed as the most important step ever taken to protect our wildlife, set targets for a nationwide rescue campaign that will cost tens of millions of pounds a year and is believed to be the first of its kind anywhere.
They aim to restore otters and water voles to their former abundance, to double the number of brown hares within the next 15 years, to hall the decline in skylarks, song thrushes and porpoises, and to create new ponds to encourage the spread of medicinal leeches. Other species targeted by rescue plans include the lady's slipper orchid, the red squirrel, the great crested newt, the black-backed meadow ant, the dormouse and the depressed river mussel.
Drawn up by a 37-member committee representing six government departments, conservation groups, fanners, landowners and academics, the plans will be published in a special 300-page report on Wednesday to fulfill a pledge made by the Prime Minister after the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. The Prince will back them in a speech on Tuesday evening.
Britain's 47 local Wildlife Trusts decided last week to give top priority to implementing the plans. Their newly appointed director-general, Simon Lyster said: «This is the most important single development ever to have taken place for Britain's wildlife. Never before have clear targets been laid down for the protection of our most important species and habitats,»
The report, the Biodiversity Action Plan, says more than 100 species have become extinct in Britain so far this century. These include the mouse-eared bat (which disappeared in 1990 after the destruction of its nursery sites), the barbot (a fish lost in 1972 through river pollution), summer lady's tresses (a plant that died out in 1959 when the bogs in which lived were drained) and a beetle that became extinct in 1986 when its last refuge was turned into a golf course.
«Species which have evolved over many thousands of years may be lost very quickly and cannot be recreated.» the report warns.
«We should hand over to the next generation an environment no less rich than the one we ourselves inherited.»
There are detailed action plans for 116 animals and plants and 14 endangered habitats which it estimates will cost 16.7 m pounds to implement in 1997, rising to 39.6 m in 2010 The programmes include:
· Otters effectively lost from most оf England over the past 30 to 40 years, to be restored to their 1960 abundance by 2010;
· Water voles, which have declined by 94 per cent this century, to be returned to 1970 levels, also by 2010;
· Spring-time populations of brown hares, which have “substantially declined», to be doubled by 2010;
· Tlie dormouse, lost from up to seven counties over the past century, to be reestablished in at least five;
· Medicinal leeches, now down to just 20 isolated populations, to be helped by safeguarding present sites and creating new ponds;
· Tlie decline of song thrushes, whose numbers have been halved in 25 years, to be halted by 2000;
· The decline of skylarks in lowland farmland (by more than half since 1969) to be reversed;
· Helping red squirrels with hoppers “designed to be selective in poisoning grey squirrels but not red ones”
· Measures to revive depressed river mussels named after their shape rather than their response to being seriously threatened;
The Worldwide Fund for Nature will announce that it will accelerate its programmes for saving British wildlife in response to the report. But its director-general, Robin Pellew, said, the plans were “only the beginning of a long process’.
