CAT Critical Reasoning Practice question with Solution 24

This author pounds home the main point with each sentence. First: bald eagles have the unique capacity to foster a sympathetic attitude toward other threatened species. Second: without that sympathy, the needs of those other species will be unmet. Third: the needs of other species can only be met by beginning with the conservation of the bald eagle. Clearly, the author’s point is that it is first necessary to see to the conservation of the bald eagle if we hope to be able to conserve any other threatened species; or, as (B) has it, the conservation of the bald eagle is the necessary first step toward conserving other threatened species.

(A) The author doesn’t say conservation efforts should concentrate on bald eagles instead of other species; she says they should concentrate on bald eagles because that’s the only way other obscure endangered species can be saved.

(C) is a distortion of the author’s point; it makes only a vague reference to the bald eagle (an important symbolic species), although never mentions it by name, and also ignores entirely the conservation needs of the more obscure endangered species.

(D) is too vague—like (C), it doesn’t even mention the bald eagle, which was clearly the focus of the argument.

(E) While (E) is technically correct in saying that the author gives special importance to the bald eagle, this is not the author’s main point. It is, in fact evidence for her main point: that because of the unique importance of the bald eagle, conservation of the bald eagle is a necessary first step toward conserving other species.