As symbols of the freedom of the wilderness, bald eagles have the uniq

Explanation

This author pounds home the main point with each sentence.

First: bald eagles have the unique capacity to foster a sympathetic attitude toward other threatened species.
Second: without that sympathy, the needs of those other species will be unmet. Third: the needs of other species can only be met by beginning with the conservation of the bald eagle. Clearly, the author’s point is that it is first necessary to see to the conservation of the bald eagle if we hope to be able to conserve any other threatened species; or, as (B) has it, the conservation of the bald eagle is the necessary first step toward conserving other threatened species.

(A) The author doesn’t say conservation efforts should concentrate on bald eagles instead of other species; she says they should concentrate on bald eagles because that’s the only way other obscure endangered species can be saved.

(C) is a distortion of the author’s point; it makes only a vague reference to the bald eagle (an important symbolic species), although never mentions it by name, and also ignores entirely the conservation needs of the more obscure endangered species.

(D) is too vague—like (C), it doesn’t even mention the bald eagle, which was clearly the focus of the argument.

(E) While (E) is technically correct in saying that the author gives special importance to the bald eagle, this is not the author’s main point. It is, in fact evidence for her main point: that because of the unique importance of the bald eagle, conservation of the bald eagle is a necessary first step toward conserving other species.

Use your Reading Comp. skills on the Critical Reasoning sections whenever possible. You can think of this as a Main Point question for a mini RC passage. In RC, you learn that the answer to a Main Point question must be broad enough to cover the entire passage without leaving out the main elements of the passage. In this case, choices that don’t contain the bald eagle (choices (C) and (D)) can be eliminated immediately.

The main point of the passage is not just some statement with which the author would agree. Ask yourself: why is the author making an argument? What is he or she trying to convince me of? That’s the main point.

In Main Point questions, often there will be words or phrases in the correct choice that paraphrase those used in the argument. Here, saying that the needs of X “can only be met . . .” by Y is the same as saying that Y is “necessary” for X.

Answer: B