#3 - The official listing of an animal species as endangered

[karunyavgopal]

Hi, I narrowed down the answer choices to A and D for this question but ended up choosing answer choice A because I thought that "stronger antipoaching laws" in the stimulus countered answer choice D which talked about animal collectors finding rarer animals to be more desirable. Can you please explain why D is correct and why A is wrong?

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi, Karunyavgopal,

Good question, and good job narrowing the answers down to two possibilities. Perhaps the best way to respond to your question would be to focus on the process you should use when faced with this particular task. Note the question asks you to account for the increase in the rate of population decline. When you first read about the population decline in the stimulus, what was your reaction? When I read that the population actually ended up declining after the species were listed as endangered, I was surprised! I would have expected the population to increase, so what could account for the observed population decrease?

That's the question task here. We are looking for an explanation of the population decrease. "How could it be possible that when we listed the animals as endangered, their population declined even faster?"

You can use a similar question to answer most Resolve the Paradox questions: "How is it possible that these two seemingly incongruous events could both happen?"

We might be able to come up with a good prephrase, but even if we don't, just knowing what the two phenomena are is often enough to get you to the right answer.

Consider again answer choices (A) and (D). Note that (A) talks about the process of being listed as endangered taking years, but pay close attention to what the events are. We are curious why the population declined after the species was listed as endangered. Thus, what happened before the species was listed as endangered or while the process was ongoing is not this issue here.

Now consider answer choice (D). What if endangered animals are more attractive to poachers and collectors? Could this information explain why it is that the rate of population decline decreases after the animal is listed as endangered? Yes! This is it. This information explains the unexpected event and answers our question.

I hope this helps!

[desiboy96]

Hello, I'm a bit confused about this question and need some help to see where I'm wrong in my reasoning.

So I had a prephrase that matches the post above (how is it that despite the legal safe guards that the population of many endangered animals declined?).

However, I fail to see how D resolves the paradox. I picked B but I see why its wrong now (we are concerned with the law not public campaigns) but I eliminated D thinking that this answer choice seems to be assuming that the people who acquire these animals can get past the safe guards in place (whatever they maybe). In short, D felt like a stretch based on what is given in the passage.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi deisboy,

Your prephrase is actually a different puzzle than we have here. Close, but importantly different. It's not just that the species continue to decline, but that they do so at a faster rate. That must mean that something is happening when the label is applied that makes it more at risk. We are looking for a new sort of activity, or result of the label that has the effect of increasing the rate of decline.

Answer choice (D) is the only one that does this. It explains the effect the label has (showing animals are endangered) also has a secondary effect (noting that they are rare). That secondary effect is what makes them more valuable to poachers, who would then be more likely to seek them out. We don't need to know how exactly they are skirting the law. They are poachers after all, it's what they do. But it does explain the supply/demand mechanism at work here.

Hope that helps!

[desiboy96]

Hi Rachel thank you so much for your explanation. That cleared things up