历年6级阅读真题及翻译.docxVIP

Passage One ： 历年英语六级阅读真题及翻译（ 2009.06-1999.01 ） 2009 年6 月英语六级阅读真题 For hundreds of millions of years,turtles (海龟 ) havestruggled outofthesea tolaytheir eggs on sandy beaches, long before there were nature documentaries to celebrate them,or GPS satellites and marine biologists to track them, or volunteers to hand-carry the hatchlings (幼龟) down to the water ’s edge lest they become disoriented by headlights and crawl towards a motel parking lot instead. A formidable wall of bureaucracy has been erectedto protect their prime nesting on the Atlantic coastlines. With all that attention paid to them, you ’d think these creatures would at least have the gratitude not to go extinct. But Nature is indifferent to human notions of fairness, and a report by the Fish and WildlifeService showed a worrisome drop in the populations of several species of North Atlantic turtles, notably loggerheads, which can grow to as much as 400 pounds. The South Floridanesting population, the largest, has declined by 50% in the last decade, according to ElizabethGriffin, a marine biologist with the environmental group Oceana. The figures prompted Oceana to petition the government to upgrade the level of protection for the North Atlanticloggerheads from “threatened ” to “endangered ”—meaning they are in danger of disappearingwithout additional help. Which raises the obvious question: what else do these turtles want fromus, anyway? It turns out, according to Griffin, that while we have done a good job of protecting the turtles for the weeks they spend on land (as egg-laying females, as eggs and as hatchlings), we have neglected the years spend intheocean. “The threat is from commercial fishing, ”says Griffin. Trawlers (which drag large nets through the water and along the ocean floor) and longline fishers (which can deploy thousands of hooks on lines that can stretch for miles) take a heavy toll on turtles. Of course, like every other environmental issue today, this isplayingoutagainstthebackgroun