General English Level 5 GELEV5 Unit 02 Topic 04.doc Dictionary to appreciate destruction diversity plantation potential individual habitats endangered Vocabulary an acre a piece of land about 4000 square metres "greenie" person who cares about the natural environment to fell to cut down trees to filter to clean to poison to kill using chemicals  READING 01a Preserve our forests Melinda Watson writes about how she became passionate about the environment. I haven't always been a "greenie". I grew up on a dairy farm, so I have always had some awareness of the balance between human activity and nature. But it was during a bushwalking trip ten years ago that I began to take a strong interest in what we are doing to the natural world around us. It was a beautiful sunny day and I was walking through a magnificent old forest, which was full of all kinds of animals and birds. Around me, trees, which were hundreds of years old, reached high into the sky. These trees protected thousands of other plants that were growing there. The diversity of life was totally amazing. Suddenly, all that changed. I came out of the forest and in front of me as far as I could see was nothing but blackened earth. It was like another planet. There was no sound - no birds singing, and no animals moving in the trees - nothing. The forest, which had been home to all those birds, animals and plants, was gone. It had all been chopped down and burnt. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was at that moment that I decided to spend the rest of my life fighting to save our environment, especially our forests. 69 QUESTLANGUAGE