The last paragraph begins, 'None of this makes beavers easy to live with.' Why does the author include this paragraph?
Read an Informational Passage · ELPAC Grades 6–8 reading. The correct answer, and the reasoning behind it.
A longer factual text, with questions about the main idea, supporting details and vocabulary.
Read the passage. Then answer the questions.
The Beaver Comes Back
For most of the twentieth century, California treated the beaver as a nuisance. Trappers had already removed nearly all of them by 1850, and the animals that remained were often relocated or destroyed, because their dams flooded roads and pastures. By the 1940s many wildlife managers had concluded that beavers had never really belonged in much of the state.
That conclusion turned out to rest on thin evidence. Researchers working through fur-trade ledgers, mission records and old newspaper accounts found beavers described in rivers from the Oregon border to the edge of the Mojave. The animals had not been absent. They had been removed so early that nobody alive remembered them.
The distinction matters, because a beaver dam is not simply an obstruction. Water that slows behind a dam sinks into the ground instead of racing downstream, which raises the water table and keeps side channels wet into late summer. Those channels give young salmon cool places to grow, and the moisture they hold can slow a fire moving across a valley floor. After two recent Northern California wildfires, researchers found green vegetation standing around beaver ponds while the surrounding hillsides had burned.
None of this makes beavers easy to live with. A dam built in the wrong culvert still floods a road, and the consequence lands on a county budget rather than on a river. What has changed is the first response. California now runs a restoration program for the species, and a landowner facing a flooded field can request a flow device, a pipe set through the dam that lowers the pond without removing the animals that built it.
The question
Choose the best answer.
The last paragraph begins, 'None of this makes beavers easy to live with.' Why does the author include this paragraph?
- To argue that beaver dams should be removed from California rivers
- To admit the real costs of living with beavers and then show how the state's response has changedCorrect answer
- To explain step by step how a flow device is built
- To show that county budgets are too small to repair flooded roads
Why “To admit the real costs of living with beavers and then show how the state's response has changed” is correct
This asks about the function of a paragraph rather than its content, which is a structure question and one of the harder demands in this grade band. The opening sentence concedes a point against the author's own case, and the rest of the paragraph answers that concession by describing the restoration program and flow devices. Teaching students to notice a concession — 'none of this makes', 'of course', 'it is true that' — and then to read on for the answer is a transferable skill.
Why the other answers are wrong
- To argue that beaver dams should be removed from California rivers — The paragraph describes a way to lower a pond 'without removing the animals that built it', which is the opposite of an argument for removal.
- To explain step by step how a flow device is built — A flow device is defined in one clause; the passage gives no construction steps.
- To show that county budgets are too small to repair flooded roads — County budgets are mentioned to show where the cost falls, not to claim they are inadequate.
Practice more of this
More reading practice for Grades 6–8, or see the ELPAC practice test for grades 6–8. For other grades, see free ELPAC practice tests by grade.
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