Source A: The last open pasture

An original contemporary non-fiction-style practice text, written for this question.

The proposal was drawn as a thick line around the last open pasture. At the meeting, the line looked inexpensive. In the field, it would mean posts, gates, labour and a fence high enough to keep deer away from grass which our small herd needed through the dry weeks. I made cheese from the milk. When grass ran short, the bill for bought feed could consume the money I expected to earn from an entire batch.

The deer had followed the same route down from the wooded ridge for as long as anyone remembered. I saw them at dawn, stepping through the mist between the cows. They did not know that the field’s name had changed from common grazing to a managed parcel on a grant application. They knew where grass remained. A fence would be a new fact across an old journey.

My neighbour said that protecting the pasture was obvious. We were keeping a small business alive, not building a palace. Another resident asked where the deer would go. Someone answered that they would find somewhere, a phrase with the ease of a door closed from the comfortable side. I wanted the fence, but I could hear how little work that answer had done. The animals’ next meal was not made certain by our inability to see it.

We walked the boundary with the land manager. She asked us to distinguish the places where feed was being lost from the places where we merely disliked seeing deer. That was an awkward distinction. We had begun treating every hoofprint as evidence of a threat, even along the rough strip which the cattle scarcely grazed. The proposed line moved inward. A gate was added for people, and a passage outside the protected area was left along the trees. None of this made the posts cheaper.

The plan was for one season, followed by a review. We would record feed bought, damage found and whether the deer still used the route. A trial sounded less decisive than a permanent answer, but our certainty had been larger than our knowledge. I agreed to help keep the records, though I would rather have spent the hours in the dairy.

At the next dawn visit, the field was quiet. I imagined the new boundary running across it and tried to see it from both sides. I could not become a deer by making that effort. Nor could I pay for winter feed with sympathy. But I could insist that our need was described exactly, and that the line around it was no larger than the case we could honestly make.

Source B: From The Explorer’s Daughter — Kari Herbert

Read Source B in the official Pearson anthology (printed pages 6–7).

Compare how the writers present their ideas and perspectives about how people respond when their way of life conflicts with the needs of wild animals.

Support your answer with detailed examples from both texts, including brief quotations.