TOEFL ITP Reading set 027
Reading Comprehension practice — read the passage and choose the best answer.
การจัดการไฟโดยชนพื้นเมืองกับความหลากหลายทางชีวภาพ
- Line numbers appear every 5 lines.
- Answer all 10 questions, then choose ตรวจคำตอบ to see the Thai translation, score summary, and explanation.
- Use Previous / Next to open the previous or next practice set.
For thousands of years, Indigenous communities in many
fire-prone regions practiced cultural burning: small,
carefully timed fires that cleared leaf litter, opened
patches of grassland, and reduced the chance that a later
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lightning strike would ignite an uncontrollable blaze.
These cool-season burns stayed close to the ground, moved
slowly, and left mature trees largely unharmed. Animals
could walk ahead of the flame front, and seed banks in
the soil often survived. Ecologists now argue that
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excluding fire for decades—once treated as prudent forest
protection—allowed dense undergrowth to accumulate and
turned many landscapes into fuel-rich systems ready for
extreme wildfire when drought and wind finally arrived.
Beyond hazard reduction, cultural burning shapes habitat
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diversity across seasons. A mosaic of recently burned,
recovering, and older vegetation creates edges where
insects, birds, and small mammals find food and cover that
a uniform closed canopy rarely provides. Some plant
species depend on mild heat or smoke chemicals to break
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seed dormancy; without periodic low-intensity fire, those
populations shrink. In Australian and North American case
studies, reintroducing Indigenous-led burns has revived
native grasses, limited invasive shrubs that thrive after
severe crown fires, and improved foraging conditions for
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several threatened species that prefer open understories.
Cool burns can also recycle nutrients into the topsoil
faster than long fire-free intervals. Modern agencies
that partner with Indigenous fire practitioners still face
institutional barriers. Liability rules, narrow burn
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windows, and air-quality permits can delay work until
fuels are dangerously dry. Training programs that treat
cultural burning as optional folklore rather than applied
ecological knowledge also slow adoption. Where
co-management succeeds, managers combine satellite fuel
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maps with local calendars of plant flowering and animal
nesting so burns avoid sensitive periods. The broader
lesson is that biodiversity goals and wildfire safety are
not opposing agendas: restoring Indigenous fire regimes
can support both when policy treats Traditional Ecological
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Knowledge as operational guidance, not a ceremonial afterthought.