World News for Students of English

19-01-2022 15:00

Elephants in Sri Lanka have nothing to eat because the area where they normally live is getting smaller.

The number of elephants dropped from 14,000 in the 19^th century to 6,000 in 2011. Poachers, who kill the animals illegally, are one reason. The second reason is the degradation of the natural world. Elephants are getting closer to farms and people’s homes. They even get to landfills where they eat plastic. Some animals ate too much of it, and they died.

Angry farmers built electric fences to protect their mango and coconut farms, but they did it illegally, and sometimes they did not know how to do it properly. Such fences can kill both people and the elephants.

Difficult words: the degradation of the natural world (when the land, water, and air get worse where wild plants grow and wild animals live), landfill (the ground at a place where people bury large amounts of things which they do not want or need anymore), electric fence (a fence which gives an electric shock to any person or animal who touches it).

You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.