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【完形填空】Cloze: One Bird, One Number
Lin Xiaoyu first noticed the ash on a Tuesday afternoon in November, when grey flakes (1) on her sleeve as she walked past the edge of the city.
She worked as a junior hydrologist at a provincial institute, and she knew immediately that this was not the smoke from burning maize stubble.
The ash came from a plastics depot nine kilometres away, and she put on a mask, tagged the location and sent a photo to her team.
But that fire was not the real story. The real story (2) in 2016, when Lin joined a five-year project to restore a 42-hectare wetland.
The wetland had been treated as wasteland since 1998. Sewage, industrial runoff and a falling water table had left it a foul marsh where only mosquitoes seemed to (3).
The team was told to improve aeration, flush out contaminated sediment and attract birds back. The budget was 18.7 million yuan — enough for pumps and reed planting, but not enough for the large-scale land purchase that a conventional reserve would (4).
Lin's mentor, Professor Chen Gang, had spent his career studying amphibious ecology. "We cannot (5) nature to a postage stamp," he told her. "We can only create a link."
The early results were unimpressive. Volunteers counted 11 species in 2017 and 14 in 2018. Then, in the spring of 2019, a drainage culvert silted up and the water level dropped by 30 centimetres.
Within two weeks, mudflats appeared, and a flock of 60 black-tailed godwits landed on the site. Lin remembered the sound: a low, tense whistling, like an orchestra tuning up before a concert.
The team's method was simple. They measured water depth, dissolved oxygen and invertebrate density, adjusted the pumps, and avoided interfering (6) the process.
By 2021, the count had reached 87 species, and the wetland had become a peripheral but distinctive stop on the East Asian–Australasian Flyway. The change was not a crusade; it was a series of adjustments, some planned and some accidental.
The cost arrived quietly. In 2022, a developer got approval for 1,200 apartments on land 400 metres from the wetland's northern boundary.
The environmental impact assessment was 22 pages long. It mentioned temporary noise and minor visual impact, but it did not (7) the water table at all.
Lin and Chen submitted a formal critique. They lost. The developer's lawyer argued that the wetland's success was "an obstacle to urbanisation." Chen, who was 62 and had recently been diagnosed with a heart condition, retired in January 2023.
At his farewell, he gave Lin a notebook with 14 years of handwritten water-quality data. "Do not let them classify this as a park," he said. "It is an organ, not a sculpture."
Construction began in March 2023. By August, the water level had dropped by 22 centimetres, and the godwits did not return that autumn. Lin measured a 38 percent fall in invertebrate density.
She felt a cumulative sense of loss that she could not put into a policy brief. In October, she attended a public hearing where a mother said her son had developed asthma, and a developer's representative replied that the wetland had become a mosquito breeding ground.
Lin wanted to explain the asymmetry: the wetland had never been the problem; the concrete was. But she did not speak. She was afraid her voice would (8).
In April 2024, Lin got a small grant of 240,000 yuan to install three real-time sensors. The data went online, and within six months 4,000 residents had signed up for weekly water-quality updates.
The developer's construction continued, and the wetland did not recover. But something else did. In September 2024, a single black-tailed godwit was photographed on the remaining mudflat.
Lin saw the image on her phone at 6:40 in the morning. She did not feel triumph. She felt a strange, quiet recognition. She saved the photograph, labelled it "one," and went back to work.
Now, in the winter of 2024, Lin walks the northern boundary every Friday. The apartment towers are 11 storeys high, and the water is 8 centimetres lower than last year.
She carries a notebook, a handheld sensor, and a small bag of rice for the ducks that stay through the cold. The birds that left have not returned in sufficient numbers, but she still records every sighting (9) the database.
For Lin, the wetland is not a project to be completed or a problem to be solved. It is a place that keeps changing, and she keeps (10) it.
Choices
(1) A. buried B. settled C. floated D. gathered
(2) A. returned B. ended C. began D. continued
(3) A. disappear B. survive C. thrive D. escape
(4) A. require B. avoid C. reduce D. replace
(5) A. confine B. compare C. contribute D. connect
(6) A. with B. from C. for D. on
(7) A. mention B. ignore C. measure D. protect
(8) A. change B. rise C. tremble D. recover
(9) A. at B. in C. by D. on
(10) A. forgetting B. building C. watching D. leaving