Directions: Read the following passage and answer the questions by choosing the best/most appropriate options:
1. World Wildlife Day just passed and so did thousands of birds and animals which face extinction on Earth. The UN finds one million animal and plant species confronting the end of their existence - species are vanishing thousands of times faster than over the last ten million years. The World Economic Forum (WEF) estimates that humanity has wiped out 83% of wild mammals and half of all plants. Human activity has altered 75% of Earth's surface, and wildlife forced into shrinking corners where, as the WWF finds, hunting, pollution and climate change have caused a 68% fall in mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish since 1970.
2. This loss, termed the sixth mass extinction, has huge implications for humanity. The WEF terms biodiversity loss as the second most impactful risk humanity faces, affecting the creation of food, air, water, stable ground, commercial materials and life-saving medicines. It quantifies human dependence on biodiversity at a huge $44 trillion of economic value generation or over half the world's GDP. But biodiversity loss also has a deeper cost for this range of life, encompassing all creatures great and small, and is the result of 4 - 5 billion years of evolution. Each year, nature painstakingly wove a brilliant web of life where each organism is meant to contribute something to another. By tearing this web, humans are wrecking the very point of our existence, one among many placed on a planet blessed with life, all its beings meant to support each other.
3. Many mitigations are possible. These include encouraging afforestation and conservation, minimising pollution and banning hunting. Also, as an expert emphasises, we need to be more aware of the magical world of biodiversity, where creatures communicate through haunting calls and lingering fragrance, brilliant colours to bioluminescence. Mindfulness brings us closer to our fellow beings - and to the core of our own lives.