Keep The Balance Of Nature

王志刚

許多年前，农民为保护他们的鸡而猎杀了很多老鹰。 然而新问题来了，田里的田鼠猖獗了起来，结果农民的庄稼大多给吃光了。这是怎么回事呢？看看下文你就知道了。

Not  many  years  ago，  some  farmers  were worried  because  hawks  were  taking many  of their  chicken.  The  farmers didnt  know  what  to  do.  Finally they went  to  the  country officials  and  asked  for  help.

“Kill  the hawks，” the  officials  said，“ we  will  even  pay  for  them. ” So  the  farmers  began  to  think  of  ways  to  kill the hawks.

The  farmers  killed  many  hawks.  They  no  longer  had  to  worry  about  their  chickens. But  they  now  had  a  new  worry. Field  mice  were  eating  up  a  lot  of  the  farmers  grain.

How  did  this happen？

Hawks  ate  not  only  chickens  but  also  field  mice.  They  ate  more  field  mice  than  chickens.  But  the  farmers  didnt  know  this.  When  they  killed  a  lot  of  hawks，  they  changed  the balance.

When people move into a new place，  they often  destroy  many  wild plants.  Often these plant are food for the animals. If the animals cant find enough plants to  eat， they  will starve or  have  to leave  the place.

In one part of  the  USA，  for  example  the  deer  there  like  to  eat  a  certain  kind  of  wild  roses.  The  mountain  lions  there  eat  the  deer.  The number  of  deer，  mountain  lions  and wild  roses  doesnt  change  much  if  people  leave  things  as  they  are.

But  people  killed  many  mountain  lions  in  order  to  protect  the deer.  Soon  there  were so many deer that they ate  up  all  the wild  roses.  Then  the  deer  began  to  eat  the  green  leaves of young trees. These trees  were  important  to  the  farmers.  So  the  farmers thought  of  ways  to  protect  their  trees. Now  the  deer had  nothing  to  eat，  and many  of  them  died. This  was  another  lesson  from  nature.