The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the
best answer for each question.
RESIDENTS of Lozère, a hilly department in southern France, recite complaints familiar to
many rural corners of Europe. In remote hamlets and villages, with names such as Le Bacon
and Le Bacon Vieux, mayors grumble about a lack of local schools, jobs, or phone and
internet connections. Farmers of grazing animals add another concern: the return of wolves.
Eradicated from France last century, the predators are gradually creeping back to more
forests and hillsides. “The wolf must be taken in hand,” said an aspiring parliamentarian,
Francis Palombi, when pressed by voters in an election campaign early this summer. Tourists
enjoy visiting a wolf park in Lozère, but farmers fret over their livestock and their livelihoods. .
. .
As early as the ninth century, the royal office of the Luparii—wolf-catchers—was created in
France to tackle the predators. Those official hunters (and others) completed their job in the
1930s, when the last wolf disappeared from the mainland. Active hunting and improved
technology such as rifles in the 19th century, plus the use of poison such as strychnine later
on, caused the population collapse. But in the early 1990s the animals reappeared. They
crossed the Alps from Italy, upsetting sheep farmers on the French side of the border. Wolves
have since spread to areas such as Lozère, delighting environmentalists, who see the
predators’ presence as a sign of wider ecological health. Farmers, who say the wolves cause
the deaths of thousands of sheep and other grazing animals, are less cheerful. They grumble
that green activists and politically correct urban types have allowed the return of an old
enemy.
Various factors explain the changes of the past few decades. Rural depopulation is part of the
story. In Lozère, for example, farming and a once-flourishing mining industry supported a
population of over 140,000 residents in the mid-19th century. Today the department has fewer
than 80,000 people, many in its towns. As humans withdraw, forests are expanding. In
France, between 1990 and 2015, forest cover increased by an average of 102,000 hectares
each year, as more fields were given over to trees. Now, nearly one-third of mainland France
is covered by woodland of some sort. The decline of hunting as a sport also means more
forests fall quiet. In the mid-to-late 20th century over 2m hunters regularly spent winter
weekends tramping in woodland, seeking boars, birds and other prey. Today the Fédération
Nationale des Chasseurs, the national body, claims 1.1m people hold hunting licences,
though the number of active hunters is probably lower. The mostly protected status of the wolf
in Europe—hunting them is now forbidden, other than when occasional culls are sanctioned
by the state—plus the efforts of NGOs to track and count the animals, also contribute to the
recovery of wolf populations.
As the lupine population of Europe spreads westwards, with occasional reports of wolves
seen closer to urban areas, expect to hear of more clashes between farmers and those who
celebrate the predators’ return. Farmers’ losses are real, but are not the only economic story.
Tourist venues, such as parks where wolves are kept and the animals’ spread is discussed,
also generate income and jobs in rural areas.
Question 1-
Which one of the following statements, if true, would weaken the author’s claims?
1. Wolf attacks on tourists in Lozère are on the rise.
2. Unemployment concerns the residents of Lozère.
3. Having migrated out in the last century, wolves are now returning to Lozère.
4. The old mining sites of Lozère are now being used as grazing pastures for sheep.
Explanation
Ans- 1 Wolf attacks on tourists in Lozère are on the rise.
Question 2-
The inhabitants of Lozère have to grapple with all of the following problems, EXCEPT:
1. poor rural communication infrastructure.
2. livestock losses.
3. lack of educational facilities
4. decline in the number of hunting licences.
Explanation
Ans-
4. decline in the number of hunting licences.
Question 3-
The author presents a possible economic solution to an existing issue facing Lozère
that takes into account the divergent and competing interests of:
1. politicians and farmers.
2. environmentalists and politicians.
3. farmers and environmentalists.
4. tourists and environmentalists.
Explanation
Answer- 3 farmers and environmentalists.
Question 4-
Which one of the following has NOT contributed to the growing wolf population in
Lozère?
1. The granting of a protected status to wolves in Europe.
2. An increase in woodlands and forest cover in Lozère.
3. The shutting down of the royal office of the Luparii.
4. A decline in the rural population of Lozère.
Explanation
Answer- 3 The shutting down of the royal office of the Luparii.
The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the
best answer for each question.
Many human phenomena and characteristics – such as behaviors, beliefs, economies,
genes, incomes, life expectancies, and other things – are influenced both by geographic
factors and by non-geographic factors. Geographic factors mean physical and biological
factors tied to geographic location, including climate, the distributions of wild plant and animal
species, soils, and topography. Non-geographic factors include those factors subsumed under
the term culture, other factors subsumed under the term history, and decisions by individual
people. . . .
[T]he differences between the current economies of North and South Korea . . . cannot be
attributed to the modest environmental differences between [them] . . . They are instead due
entirely to the different [government] policies . . . At the opposite extreme, the Inuit and other
traditional peoples living north of the Arctic Circle developed warm fur clothes but no
agriculture, while equatorial lowland peoples around the world never developed warm fur
clothes but often did develop agriculture. The explanation is straightforwardly geographic,
rather than a cultural or historical quirk unrelated to geography. . . . Aboriginal Australia
remained the sole continent occupied only by hunter/gatherers and with no indigenous
farming or herding . . . [Here the] explanation is biogeographic: the Australian continent has
no domesticable native animal species and few domesticable native plant species. Instead,
the crops and domestic animals that now make Australia a food and wool exporter are all
non-native (mainly Eurasian) species such as sheep, wheat, and grapes, brought to Australia
by overseas colonists.
Today, no scholar would be silly enough to deny that culture, history, and individual choices
play a big role in many human phenomena. Scholars don’t react to cultural, historical, and
individual-agent explanations by denouncing “cultural determinism,” “historical determinism,”
or “individual determinism,” and then thinking no further. But many scholars do react to any
explanation invoking some geographic role, by denouncing “geographic determinism” . . .
Several reasons may underlie this widespread but nonsensical view. One reason is that some
geographic explanations advanced a century ago were racist, thereby causing all geographic
explanations to become tainted by racist associations in the minds of many scholars other
than geographers. But many genetic, historical, psychological, and anthropological
explanations advanced a century ago were also racist, yet the validity of newer non-racist
genetic etc. explanations is widely accepted today.
Another reason for reflex rejection of geographic explanations is that historians have a
tradition, in their discipline, of stressing the role of contingency (a favorite word among
historians) based on individual decisions and chance. Often that view is warranted . . . But
often, too, that view is unwarranted. The development of warm fur clothes among the Inuit
living north of the Arctic Circle was not because one influential Inuit leader persuaded other
Inuit in 1783 to adopt warm fur clothes, for no good environmental reason.
A third reason is that geographic explanations usually depend on detailed technical facts of
geography and other fields of scholarship . . . Most historians and economists don’t acquire
that detailed knowledge as part of the professional training.
Question 1-
The examples of the Inuit and Aboriginal Australians are offered in the passage to
show:
1. human resourcefulness across cultures in adapting to their surroundings.
- how environmental factors lead to comparatively divergent paths in livelihoods and
development. - that despite geographical isolation, traditional societies were self-sufficient and
adaptive. - how physical circumstances can dictate human behaviour and cultures.
Explanation
Answer- 4 how physical circumstances can dictate human behaviour and cultures.
Question 2-
All of the following are advanced by the author as reasons why non-geographers
disregard geographic influences on human phenomena EXCEPT their:
1. belief in the central role of humans, unrelated to physical surroundings, in influencing
phenomena.
- dismissal of explanations that involve geographical causes for human behaviour.
- disciplinary training which typically does not include technical knowledge of
geography. - lingering impressions of past geographic analyses that were politically offensive
Explanation
Answer- 2 dismissal of explanations that involve geographical causes for human behaviour.
Question 3-
The author criticises scholars who are not geographers for all of the following reasons
EXCEPT:
1. their outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena.
- their labelling of geographic explanations as deterministic.
- the importance they place on the role of individual decisions when studying human
phenomena. - their rejection of the role of biogeographic factors in social and cultural phenomena.
Explanation
Answer- 1 their outdated interpretations of past cultural and historical phenomena.
Question 4-
All of the following can be inferred from the passage EXCEPT:
Ans 1. agricultural practices changed drastically in the Australian continent after it was
colonised.
- individual dictat and contingency were not the causal factors for the use of fur clothing
in some very cold climates. - while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have
bio-geographic origins. - several academic studies of human phenomena in the past involved racist
interpretations.
Explanation
Answer- 3
while most human phenomena result from culture and individual choice, some have
bio-geographic origins.
