Saving the saiga: reading answers and analysis
A strange-nosed antelope that once ran in herds of millions. It crashed after 1991 under poaching, blocked migration routes, disease and a drying climate. A large Kazakh conservation project has since helped push numbers back up.
Questions 1-13 · 13 marks · 2 question blocks
Where the answers sit
The notes (1-7) run in order through paragraphs B to G. The TRUE / FALSE / NOT GIVEN block (8-13) starts at A and ends in H.
Questions 1-7
The notes follow the passage's two halves: how the saiga is built, then why it declined. Each 'reason for decline' note matches one paragraph (D poaching, E habitat, F disease, G climate). Go to the right paragraph and look for the one noun the note is missing.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | dust | — |
| 2 | blood | — |
| 3 | coat | — |
| 4 | horns | — |
| 5 | habitat | — |
| 6 | routes | — |
| 7 | streams | — |
Questions 8-13
Two NOT GIVENs, both about comparisons or consequences the passage never makes. Two FALSEs come from numbers and trends: 'evenly spread' against over 90% in one country, and 'falling' against 'steadily recovered'.
| Question | Answer | Also accepted |
|---|---|---|
| 8 | FALSE | — |
| 9 | FALSE | — |
| 10 | TRUE | — |
| 11 | NOT GIVEN | — |
| 12 | TRUE | — |
| 13 | NOT GIVEN | — |
The questions most people get wrong
The note already says 'for migration', so the answer is the thing that gets blocked: routes. Writing 'migration' repeats the note and is wrong.
TRUE, and people doubt it because it sounds odd. Paragraph D says conservationists pushed saiga horn as a substitute for rhino horn to protect rhinos, and poaching exploded.
Paragraph G says the saiga struggles with unpredictable climate. It never compares Central Asia with the rest of the world, so NOT GIVEN.
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The full Cambridge 21 Test 3 reading paper: all three passages, 60 minutes, marked the second you finish with a review of every answer. Already done it? Take it again and see if the same traps still get you.
Cambridge IELTS 21, Test 3, Reading Passage 1. The passage name belongs to Cambridge University Press. No passage text or question wording is reproduced on this page. The answers are published for self-marking, and the analysis is our own.