medium · Gre Verbal

Passage: Conservationists have often assumed that the least disturbed habitats harbor the greatest biodiversity, and that human presence is therefore uniformly a subtraction from nature's richness. Studies of certain long-inhabited landscapes trouble this assumption. In some Amazonian forests, the concentration of useful tree species is highest precisely where pre-Columbian peoples once lived and cultivated, suggesting that centuries of human management enriched rather than depleted the local flora. The point is not that all human activity benefits ecosystems — much of it plainly does not — but that the equation of pristineness with abundance rests on a picture of humans as necessarily external to the systems they inhabit. The author includes the clause 'much of it plainly does not' primarily in order to (A) concede that the studies cited may be methodologically flawed (B) forestall an overgeneralization the evidence might otherwise invite (C) introduce the passage's main claim for the first time (D) contradict the finding about Amazonian forests (E) argue that human management always enriches biodiversity

1. Concede outright that the cited studies may in fact be methodologically flawed
2. Forestall an overgeneralization the evidence might otherwise invite
3. Introduce the passage's central main claim for the very first time
4. Directly contradict the study's finding about the Amazonian forests
5. Argue that human management of land always enriches local biodiversity

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