填空题

If it were simply a matter of passing strong laws to protect it, the Amazon rainforest—the world’s largest tropical forest—would be safe. Brazil, whose territory includes about two-thirds of the forest, has (36) tough laws that, on paper, set most of it aside as a nature reserve and (37) stiff penalties for illegal logging. But the latest annual figures for deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon have confirmed a disturbing recent trend: the destruction is (38) despite all efforts to curb it.
The area deforested in the past year was up 6% in 2003, far worse than the Brazilian government’s (39) that it would rise by no more than about 2%. It had been the second worst year for the destruction of the rainforest since satellite surveys began. It is reckoned that almost a fifth of the Brazilian part of the forest has now been (40) out; if it were to continue at this rate, it would all be flattened within the next two centuries. Worse, tropical forests have been disappearing at an even faster rate (41) in the world, such as in Africa. The world’s greatest stores of biodiversity—and some of its main (42) of the oxygen we breathe—are still being chewed up at an (43) rate, despite decades of talk among world leaders and environmentalists about the need to preserve them.
As has been seen before in Brazil, the surge in the rate of deforestation is a (44) that the country’s economy is booming—recently it has been growing at an annual rate around 5%. Most of the timber felled illegally in Amazon is sold to (45) buyers, in particular to the construction industry in Brazil’s richer southern states.
A. predictions I. accelerating
B. alarming J. evaluation
C. preserve K. sign
D. impressively L. domestic
E. boom M. dimensions
F. suppliers N. impose
G. available O. wiped
H. elsewhere