Africa’s population of elephants declined by nearly a third from 2007

VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:

The primary error in the incorrect answers in this problem is related to pronouns. "Them" is a pronoun that appears in A, D, and E, and in none of those cases is is warranted. Even though the plural "elephants" appears in A and D, and could be seen as an antecedent for "them," "elephants" is not the subject of the sentence (the subject is "population"). This is important because of the context: the population is what declined, so saying "many of them because of..." is providing a reason for that decline - but it wasn't "them" that declined, it was the population. Since the instance of "them" creates a pronoun/meaning error, all three answers are incorrect.

Choice B omits the pronoun error but adds a verb tense error. Since the decline is in the past, with an end date of 2014 as stated, the ongoing "has declined" is an improper verb tense.

Choice C uses a proper simple-past "declined" verb tense and avoids the pronoun error "them," and is therefore correct.

Hello, Could anyone please explain how is C the correct answer? I marked B, but having a re-look I feel it has a dependent statement "mostly due to poaching", which could be weird.
In C, I see "much of that decline" to be too wordy. Please share the explantation.

Thanks,

Africa’s population of elephants declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of them because of poaching.

A. Africa’s population of elephants declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of them because of poaching.
many of them, not much of them : countable nouns. WRONG

B. From 2007 to 2014, Africa’s elephant population has declined by nearly a third, mostly due to poaching.
C. Africa’s elephant population declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of that decline a result of poaching.
Clearly mentioned in precise manner. CORRECT

D. The population of elephants in Africa declined by 30 percent from 2007 to 2014, many of them because of poaching.
wrong.
E. From 2007 to 2014, the African elephant population had declined by nearly a third, many of them being poached.
wrong.

Please confirm, if in option a, we would have "many" in place of "much", so can it be a correct answer and "them" here refers to africa's population or elephants.

Vkat, I think you're asking if it would be correct if answer choice (A) said the following:

• Africa’s population of elephants declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, many of them because of poaching.

If that indeed is your question, then there's still a problem with the new version. Sure, "many" is an improvement over "much" -- elephants, of course, are countable (...one elephant, two elephants, three elephants...), so you'd need to use "many" instead of "much." It's a step in a better direction.

The sentence would still be flawed, though. The main clause says that the "population of elephants declined". So even if the second part says "many of them because of poaching", I'm not sure that it makes sense: many elephants "declined" because of poaching? I don't think that works: the elephants themselves didn't decline because of poaching, they presumably got killed.

So your change to the sentence would help the grammar, but it wouldn't completely fix the meaning of the sentence in this case.

I hope this helps!

Hi ,

Gramatically C is the best choice that we have here.
But is the meaning conveyed in C same as it is in Question stem(A) ?
I am a bit confused on 'much of that decline a result of poaching'.

Thanks.

Prateekgmat16, in "real life," I think we would understand that (A) is trying to say the same thing as (C). But GMAT SC is all about being strict and literal about the EXACT meaning of the sentence, exactly as they've written it.



"Them" has to refer to a plural noun, and our only option here is "elephants." So the sentence is saying that the elephants declined because of poaching, and that really doesn't make logical sense. The population declined, but you wouldn't say that "elephants declined because of poaching."

So in some sense, sure: the pronoun error in (A) is a grammatical error (and "much" is wrong too, obviously). But in another sense, the pronoun creates a meaning problem. And you'll see that sort of thing pretty often on the GMAT.

I hope this helps!

Hi,
Even why "due to" is wrong here. ??
Even if we replace "due to" with "caused by", the sentence retains the meaning right! ?
Request for Help.
I chose B.

Isn't "much" is used for uncountable? In this case the correct answer (B) has "much" referring to elephant population, which is countable.

Hello, lakshya14. I think you meant to say that (C) was the correct answer. In any case, much in that answer refers to the decline, rather than to the elephants. Specifically, it hearks back to the decline in Africa's elephant population, so while elephants are indeed countable and numbers for a statistical analysis of the decline would be countable, there is nothing to count with the word decline in and of itself. The use of much is warranted.

- Andrew

@experts, shouldnt c be "Africa???s elephant population declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of that decline WAS a result of poaching."

Hello, Kritisood. Although it might seem intuitive to place was in that slot, that would actually create a problem with the punctuation. Specifically, two independent clauses joined by nothing more than a comma (i.e. without a conjunction) creates what is known as a comma splice. Notice that all the answer choices resolve an independent clause before creating a phrase, whether correct or incorrect, after the crucial comma. Each phrase consists of a quantifier (much, mostly, many), a preposition (because of, due to) or other form of explanatory marker (a result of), and a noun (poaching, being poached). If we were to change the sentence in the manner you have written above, we would have to change the comma to a semicolon or period instead.



I hope that helps. Although the above are not absolute phrases, they omit a clause-defining verb in a similar fashion.

- Andrew

Africa’s population of elephants declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of them because of poaching.

A. Africa’s population of elephants declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of them because of poaching. - ''them'' refers to the 'elephants'. It does not make any sense to say ''much of elephants because of poaching''.
B. From 2007 to 2014, Africa’s elephant population has declined by nearly a third, mostly due to poaching. - the last phrase ''mostly due to poaching'' illogically modifies the word 'third'
C. Africa’s elephant population declined by nearly a third from 2007 to 2014, much of that decline a result of poaching. - has no error. Therefore, (C) is the right answer choice.
D. The population of elephants in Africa declined by 30 percent from 2007 to 2014, many of them because of poaching.- has the same error as described in (A)
E. From 2007 to 2014, the African elephant population had declined by nearly a third, many of them being poached. - has the same error as described in (A)

Hi Lakshya

"Much" in option (C) refers not to the population, but the "decline", as is evident when it states "much of that decline".

The tense 'has declined' is also incorrectly used in option B. The sentence is describing an event in the past that ended in 2014. Usage of present perfect tense is wrong.
Experts may confirm.

Thanks for the explanation.

Please also give us your opinion about "much of that decline a result of poaching". I think this is main source of misunderstanding. Would not it be more correct if it said "much of that decline resulting?"

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Hey GMATNinja, is "declined" in option C not a verb-ed modifier? Population cannot do the action of "declined" right?