HomeMy WebLinkAboutRead Aloud Book Gr. 2-Lesson 24Hundreds of years ago, there were lots of gray wolves in North America.
Most Native American tribes respected the wolf. These people were hunters,
and they admired the wolf’s great hunting skill. But when European settlers
came to America, things changed. The Europeans were mostly farmers. They
were afraid that the wolves would eat their farm animals. The European
settlers killed so many gray wolves that the species vanished from many areas.
It was as if they were never there.
For many years, wolves were very rare in the United States. They were hard to
fi nd. They survived in only a few areas. After many years, people’s feelings about
wolves began to change. People began to take a scientifi c interest in wolves.
Scientists studied how the wolves behaved. Their biological studies showed
that wolves help the natural world in important ways. Wolves hunt animals
such as deer and moose. If there are no wolves, the numbers of deer and
moose grow too large. Then there is not enough food for all of them to
eat, and the deer and moose begin to starve. Wolves kill the sick and weak
members of the herd and keep it from getting too large.
In the 1960s, the gray wolf was placed on the United States government’s
endangered species list. This is a list of animals that are protected by law. It
is illegal to hunt any of the animals on the list. Today, having the wolves on the
endangered species list helps to ensure their survival. Instead of vanishing, the
gray wolf population has increased. With help from scientists, wolves are even
returning to some of their old homes, such as Yellowstone National Park.
The wolves have been protected so well that someday they might be
removed from the endangered species list. However, some people still fear
that gray wolves will attack their farm animals. These people fi ght plans to
bring wolves back into the areas where they once lived. But for the most part,
people realize that the wolf is not a threat. Instead, it is an important part of
the natural world.
COMPREHENSION What happened to wolves after European settlers
came to North America? What are some important science words used
in this passage?
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Yellowstone National Park is the oldest national park in the world. You can
fi nd it on a map in the northwest region of the United States. Most of the park
is in the state of Wyoming, but some of it stretches into the states of Montana
and Idaho. In 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant decided that Yellowstone was
so special that the whole country should use it. It became a public park. After
that, millions of people went to visit Yellowstone.
Almost all of Yellowstone’s landscape is covered by trees. In fact, you could think
of it as one big forest! But there are some parts of the park that are not covered
by trees. There are grassy meadows. There are even waterfalls. Yellowstone has
lakes and rivers. It also has deep canyons and tall mountain ranges.
The most interesting thing about Yellowstone is that it has very high places
and very low places. This is because Yellowstone sits on top of a big volcano!
The volcano in Yellowstone is the biggest one on the continent of North
America. A long time ago, the volcano spit out hot liquid from the center of
the earth. It did this many times. When the liquid cooled down, it turned into
rock. Some of the rock stacked up high. This made a plateau. Other parts of
the rock sank into the ground. This formed a crater.
It is very hot deep down in the earth. The volcanic activity at Yellowstone left
lots of cracks in the ground. Sometimes water fl ows down into these cracks. Then
it gets heated up by the earth. When the water gets very hot, the earth spits it
high into the air. This is called a geyser. Yellowstone has three hundred geysers.
Old Faithful is the most famous one. Old Faithful spits out hot water about every
half hour. Sometimes it can spit hot water for up to fi ve minutes without stopping!
Another reason that people go to Yellowstone is to see all the plants and
animals. Yellowstone has more than two thousand different kinds of plants. It
also has animals you might not see in a park near where you live. Yellowstone
has animals such as bears, foxes, and wolves. Some people go to Yellowstone
because there is not another place in the world that looks like it. Why do you
think you would go?
COMPREHENSION What are some things that make Yellowstone National
Park special? What words about land did you hear in this passage?
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