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Several approaches to protecting the national parks from external degradation have been proposed, such as one focusing on enacting federal legislation granting the National Park Service broader powers over lands adjacent to the national parks. Legislation addressing external threats to the national parks twice passed the House of Representatives but died without action in the Senate. Also brought to the table as a possible remedy is giving the states bordering the parks a significant and meaningful role in developing federal park management policy.

Because the livelihood of many citizens is linked to the management of national parks, local politicians often encourage state involvement in federal planning. But, state legislatures have not always addressed the fundamental policy issues of whether states should protect park wildlife.

Timber harvesting, ranching and energy exploration compete with wildlife within the local ecosystem. Priorities among different land uses are not generally established by current legislation. Additionally, often no mechanism exists to coordinate planning by the state environmental regulatory agencies. These factors limit the impact of legislation aimed at protecting park wildlife and the larger park ecosystem.

Even if these deficiencies can be overcome, state participation must be consistent with existing federal legislation. States lack jurisdiction within national parks themselves, and therefore state solutions cannot reach activities inside the parks, thus limiting state action to the land adjacent to the national parks. Under the supremacy clause, federal laws and regulations supersede state action if state law conflicts with federal legislation, if Congress precludes local regulation, or if federal regulation is so pervasive that no room remains for state control. Assuming that federal regulations leave open the possibility of state control, state participation in policy making must be harmonized with existing federal legislation.

The residents of states bordering national parks are affected by park management policies. They in turn affect the success of those policies. This interrelationship must be considered in responding to the external threats problem. Local participation is necessary in deciding how to protect park wildlife. Local interests should not, however, dictate national policy, nor should they be used as a pretext to ignore the threats to park regions. 

Direction: Read the above Paragraph and answer the following Questions
Q. What is the main purpose of the author in writing the passage? 

Several approaches to protecting the national parks from external degradation have been proposed, such as one focusing on enacting federal legislation granting the National Park Service broader powers over lands adjacent to the national parks. Legislation addressing external threats to the national parks twice passed the House of Representatives but died without action in the Senate. Also brought to the table as a possible remedy is giving the states bordering the parks a significant and meaningful role in developing federal park management policy.

Because the livelihood of many citizens is linked to the management of national parks, local politicians often encourage state involvement in federal planning. But, state legislatures have not always addressed the fundamental policy issues of whether states should protect park wildlife.

Timber harvesting, ranching and energy exploration compete with wildlife within the local ecosystem. Priorities among different land uses are not generally established by current legislation. Additionally, often no mechanism exists to coordinate planning by the state environmental regulatory agencies. These factors limit the impact of legislation aimed at protecting park wildlife and the larger park ecosystem.

Even if these deficiencies can be overcome, state participation must be consistent with existing federal legislation. States lack jurisdiction within national parks themselves, and therefore state solutions cannot reach activities inside the parks, thus limiting state action to the land adjacent to the national parks. Under the supremacy clause, federal laws and regulations supersede state action if state law conflicts with federal legislation, if Congress precludes local regulation, or if federal regulation is so pervasive that no room remains for state control. Assuming that federal regulations leave open the possibility of state control, state participation in policy making must be harmonized with existing federal legislation.

The residents of states bordering national parks are affected by park management policies. They in turn affect the success of those policies. This interrelationship must be considered in responding to the external threats problem. Local participation is necessary in deciding how to protect park wildlife. Local interests should not, however, dictate national policy, nor should they be used as a pretext to ignore the threats to park regions.

Direction: Read the above Paragraph and answer the following Questions
Q. The passage provides support for which of the following assertions? 

Several approaches to protecting the national parks from external degradation have been proposed, such as one focusing on enacting federal legislation granting the National Park Service broader powers over lands adjacent to the national parks. Legislation addressing external threats to the national parks twice passed the House of Representatives but died without action in the Senate. Also brought to the table as a possible remedy is giving the states bordering the parks a significant and meaningful role in developing federal park management policy.

Because the livelihood of many citizens is linked to the management of national parks, local politicians often encourage state involvement in federal planning. But, state legislatures have not always addressed the fundamental policy issues of whether states should protect park wildlife.

Timber harvesting, ranching and energy exploration compete with wildlife within the local ecosystem. Priorities among different land uses are not generally established by current legislation. Additionally, often no mechanism exists to coordinate planning by the state environmental regulatory agencies. These factors limit the impact of legislation aimed at protecting park wildlife and the larger park ecosystem.

Even if these deficiencies can be overcome, state participation must be consistent with existing federal legislation. States lack jurisdiction within national parks themselves, and therefore state solutions cannot reach activities inside the parks, thus limiting state action to the land adjacent to the national parks. Under the supremacy clause, federal laws and regulations supersede state action if state law conflicts with federal legislation, if Congress precludes local regulation, or if federal regulation is so pervasive that no room remains for state control. Assuming that federal regulations leave open the possibility of state control, state participation in policy making must be harmonized with existing federal legislation.

The residents of states bordering national parks are affected by park management policies. They in turn affect the success of those policies. This interrelationship must be considered in responding to the external threats problem. Local participation is necessary in deciding how to protect park wildlife. Local interests should not, however, dictate national policy, nor should they be used as a pretext to ignore the threats to park regions. 

Direction: Read the above Paragraph and answer the following Questions:
In the context of the passage, the phrase external degradation (lines 8-9) refers to which of the following:  

Several approaches to protecting the national parks from external degradation have been proposed, such as one focusing on enacting federal legislation granting the National Park Service broader powers over lands adjacent to the national parks. Legislation addressing external threats to the national parks twice passed the House of Representatives but died without action in the Senate. Also brought to the table as a possible remedy is giving the states bordering the parks a significant and meaningful role in developing federal park management policy.

Because the livelihood of many citizens is linked to the management of national parks, local politicians often encourage state involvement in federal planning. But, state legislatures have not always addressed the fundamental policy issues of whether states should protect park wildlife.

Timber harvesting, ranching and energy exploration compete with wildlife within the local ecosystem. Priorities among different land uses are not generally established by current legislation. Additionally, often no mechanism exists to coordinate planning by the state environmental regulatory agencies. These factors limit the impact of legislation aimed at protecting park wildlife and the larger park ecosystem.

Even if these deficiencies can be overcome, state participation must be consistent with existing federal legislation. States lack jurisdiction within national parks themselves, and therefore state solutions cannot reach activities inside the parks, thus limiting state action to the land adjacent to the national parks. Under the supremacy clause, federal laws and regulations supersede state action if state law conflicts with federal legislation, if Congress precludes local regulation, or if federal regulation is so pervasive that no room remains for state control. Assuming that federal regulations leave open the possibility of state control, state participation in policy making must be harmonized with existing federal legislation.

The residents of states bordering national parks are affected by park management policies. They in turn affect the success of those policies. This interrelationship must be considered in responding to the external threats problem. Local participation is necessary in deciding how to protect park wildlife. Local interests should not, however, dictate national policy, nor should they be used as a pretext to ignore the threats to park regions. 

Direction: Read the above Paragraph and answer the following Questions
Q. According to the passage, which of the following developments is most likely if environmental cooperation between the federal government and state governments does not improve? 

In the third decade of the nineteenth century, Americans began to define their character in light of the new railroads. They liked the idea that it took special people to foresee and capitalize on the promise of science. Railroad promoters, using the steam engine as a metaphor for what they thought Americans were and what they thought Americans were becoming, frequently discussed parallels between the locomotive and national character, pointing out that both possessed youth, power, speed, single-mindedness, and bright prospects.

Poor was, of course, promoting acceptance of railroads and enticing his readers to open their pocketbooks. But his metaphors had their dark side. A locomotive was quite unlike anything Americans had ever seen. It was large, mysterious and dangerous; many thought that it was a monster waiting to devour the unwary. There was a suspicion that a country founded upon Jeffersonian agrarian principles had bought a ticket and boarded a train pulled by some iron monster into the dark recesses of an unknown future.

To ease such public apprehensions, promoters, poets, editors, and writers alike adopted the notion that locomotives were really only ―iron horses, an early metaphor that lingered because it made steam technology ordinary and understandable. Iron horse metaphors assuaged fears about inherent defects in the national character, prompting images of a more secure future, and made an alien technology less frightening, and even comforting and congenial.

Essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the locomotive as an agent of domestic harmony. He observed that ―the locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot every day across the thousand various threads of national descent and employment and bind them fast in one web, adding ―an hourly assimilation goes forward, and there is no danger that local peculiarities and hostilities should be preserved. To us Americans, it seems to have fallen as a political aid. We could not else have held the vast North America together, which we now engage to do.

Direction: Read the above Paragraph and answer the following Questions
Q.  Which of the following claims would the author of the passage most agree with?