The council of Shelbyville, which wants to avoid overly depleting the

Question

The council of Shelbyville, which wants to avoid overly depleting the surrounding forest through exports of lumber, is considering subsidizing the import of certain kinds of wood to offset partly the deforestation. Such a step could actually put the forest in more severe danger, since insects often get into wood and can be introduced as a highly destructive force into habitats where they are non-native. Moreover, in the vast majority of cases in which a lumber-exporting city has become a lumber-importing city, the forest surrounding that city has been wiped out a couple years after the switch.

The answer to which of the following would be most useful for evaluating the argument above?

A. Have lobbyists representing the lumber industry in other cities successfully campaigned against subsidizing imports?

B. Would it be feasible for a town that depends on lumber exports to import a significant fraction of the wood it uses?

C. Did the other cities that switched to lumber importing do so because they had deforested the areas within reach of the city?

D. What proportion of lumber jobs in Shelbyville would be lost from subsidies of lumber imports?

E. Are the other cities that made the switch to imported lumber in similar climates?

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okHedwig · Answer

Hi
I chose option E because I though maybe similar climates could help the reason of insects attack that results in deforestation? Why is the ans C, can you please help me understand?

Thanks

Akshat_verma_25 · Answer

Here we go again-

Restating the Argument
 • Shelbyville council’s concern: Their forest may be depleted if they keep exporting lumber.
 • Proposed solution: Subsidize imports of wood.
 • Criticism: This could actually increase the danger to the forest because:
 1. Imported wood may bring insects that devastate non-native habitats.
 2. Historically, in most cases where cities switched from exporting → importing lumber, their forests were wiped out shortly afterward.

So the conclusion is: Subsidizing imports might not protect Shelbyville’s forest and could even destroy it.

What is the Gap?

The key reasoning jump is in the analogy to other cities:
 • Did those other cities’ forests disappear because of importing lumber (e.g., pests in imported wood), or did they disappear for some other reason (e.g., the forest was already overused before the switch)?

If the cause is unrelated, the analogy doesn’t support the conclusion.

Evaluating Each Option hardly...

A. Have lobbyists representing the lumber industry in other cities successfully campaigned against subsidizing imports?
 • Lobbying has nothing to do with whether imports harm forests.

B. Would it be feasible for a town that depends on lumber exports to import a significant fraction of the wood it uses?
 • Feasibility doesn’t help test whether importing destroys forests.

C. Did the other cities that switched to lumber importing do so because they had deforested the areas within reach of the city?
 • Yes! This goes directly to the causal question.
 • If forests were already gone before importing, then the destruction wasn’t caused by imports. That would weaken the argument.
 • If they weren’t deforested before the switch, then the pattern strongly supports the argument.
 • This is the most useful question.

D. What proportion of lumber jobs in Shelbyville would be lost from subsidies of lumber imports?
 • This is about jobs/economy, not forest destruction.
 • Irrelevant to evaluating the environmental argument.

E. Are the other cities that made the switch to imported lumber in similar climates?
 • Climate similarity matters only a little for insect spread but doesn’t directly address whether the forest loss was caused by imports.
 • Much weaker than C.

Correct Answer: C

Because it gets at the crucial assumption — whether importing lumber actually causes forest destruction or whether the destruction was already underway for unrelated reasons.

Happy GMAT Prep
AV

Bunuel · Answer

Official Explanation

Reading the question: the argument is not exactly airtight; it can probably be attacked in a number of ways. Arguments on Critical Reasoning questions tend to be flawed, since the questions tend to ask us to identify flaws. But any argument, even a good one, is prone to attack, and more difficult Critical Reasoning questions will tend to feature better-constructed arguments.

Creating a filter: The question stem has the classic understated testmaker's language. We can prove by stronger terms and interpret the phrase "what's most useful for evaluating" as what's critical for evaluating. And we have another shortcut, since there's a causal argument here. It's in the last sentence, which roughly asserts that switching from exporting to importing lumber causes a city's forest to go away (presumably because they introduced insects). Our expectation is that there might be "another cause" of the export-import switch, but regardless, we'll look for something on which the argument depends.

Applying the filter: Do any answer choices deal with "cause of export-import switch"? (C) does and (E) might. Choice (C), now that we look closer, is one of our specific expectations; it's a causality flip; switching to imports didn't cause deforestation; rather, deforestation led cities to import lumber. That makes a tremendous amount of sense and, if true, would deal a major blow to the argument, because the truth about other cities would have no connection to the insects.

Logical proof: We apply the negation test. If (C) is negated, cities didn't make the switch to import because they were deforested. That possibility would strengthen the argument by removing a major problem. If we have time, we could confirm that the other answer choices are not material to the argument by considering them in negated form.

The correct answer is (C).

The council of Shelbyville, which wants to avoid overly depleting the

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GMAT Critical Reasoning (CR) Questions

The council of Shelbyville, which wants to avoid overly depleting the

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