medium · GRE Verbal Reasoning

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.

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