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Passage 11
Read the following passage and answer the questions 51–55.
A sanctuary may be defined as a place where Man is passive and the rest of nature active. Till recently, nature had her own sanctuaries, whereas man either did not go at all or only as a tool-using animal in comparatively small numbers. But now, in this machinery age, there is no place left where man cannot go with overwhelming forces at his command. He can strangle to death all the nobler wildlife in the world today. Tomorrow he certainly will have done so, unless he exercises due foresight and self-control in the mean time.
There is not the slightest doubt that birds and mammals are now being killed off much faster than they can breed. And it is always the largest and noblest forms of life that suffer most. The whales and elephants, lions and eagles, go. The rats and flies, and all mean parasites remain. This is inevitable in certain cases. But it is wanton killing off that I am speaking of tonight. Civilized man begins by destroying the very forms of wild life he learns to appreciate most when he becomes still more civilized. The obvious remedy is to begin conservation at an earlier stage, when it is easier and better in every way by enforcing laws for close seasons, game preserves, the selective protection of certain species and sanctuaries.
I have just defined a sanctuary as a place where man is passive and the rest of Nature is active. But this general definition is too absolute for any special case. The mere fact that man has to protect a sanctuary does away with his purely passive attitude. Then, he can be beneficially active by destroying pests and parasites, like botflies or mosquitoes and by finding antidotes for diseases like the epidemic which periodically kills off the rabbits and thus starves many of the carnivora to death. But, except in cases, where experiment has proved his intervention to be beneficial, the less he upsets the balance of nature the better, even when he tries to be an earthly providence.