medium · GRE Verbal
Grassland songbird populations in Harlan County have fallen by a third over two decades. Conservation groups blame free-roaming domestic cats, and it is true that cats kill many birds; some advocates have therefore urged that **the county's declining songbird numbers can be reversed primarily by controlling the cat population**. Yet the steepest declines have occurred in remote grassland tracts where cats are rare, and the species declining fastest are ground-nesters whose nesting areas have been fragmented by the county's rapid conversion of pasture to row crops. A more defensible view is that **habitat loss, not predation, is the principal driver of the county's songbird decline**, and conservation funds should be allocated accordingly.
In the argument above, the two portions in boldface play which of the following roles?
- The first is a remedy premised on an explanation the argument disputes; the second is the rival explanation the argument endorses.
- The first is the argument's main conclusion; the second is an intermediate conclusion offered in support of that conclusion.
- The first is evidence cited in favor of a widely held view; the second is a concession the argument makes to that view.
- The first is a hypothesis the argument accepts with qualifications; the second is a finding that the argument takes to undermine that hypothesis.
- The first is an objection raised against conservation groups; the second is evidence offered in support of that objection.
Sign up free to see the explanation and track your rank →
More GRE Verbal practice
- Which of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the paradox?
- The novelist was known for his ________ descriptions of nature, which often spanned severa
- The sudden ________ in the expansion of the metropolitan district was attributed to the en
- Which of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the paradox?
- Naturalist: The blue-throated warbler and the gray-crowned warbler occupy the same forest
- Had the investigator been more ________, she might have discovered the discrepancy in the
- A software firm requires that every new feature pass an automated test suite before it is
- Naturalist: On this island, the native songbird population has declined sharply over the p