Source A: Beyond the orchard fence

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

At the farm shop, the apples arrived in shallow wooden trays, each variety given a neat handwritten name. Beyond the shop windows, visitors could see the orchard on its slope. They often said how peaceful it looked. Most had never stood there at three in the morning, watching the beam of a torch tremble across a broken fence.

Wild boar came down from the scrub above us. They did not take a careful sample of each variety. They pushed through the wire, ate fallen fruit and rooted around the young trees. Last autumn, one night’s damage severed an irrigation pipe and left six newly planted trees leaning at angles we could not put right. The loss appeared later as a smaller order for boxes, fewer days of paid work and a bill for repairs which could not be paid in apples.

I called it an invasion until I saw a sow with two young animals at the lower gate. She stopped whenever I moved. The smaller ones kept close, nosing through the grass beneath her. There was nothing grand about the scene. They were hungry animals finding food. The word invasion had made them sound like a planned attack on our accounts. Watching them did not repair the pipe, but it made that word difficult to use again.

We tried stronger fencing, cleared windfalls and took turns checking the boundary. The first two weeks were exhausting. A neighbour suggested that we should simply stop growing fruit beside wild land, as though the orchard could be picked up and moved to a place without competing appetites. Another said the animals should all be removed. Neither suggestion described the work of the next morning: finding the gap, lifting the wire and deciding which repair we could afford.

I do not expect a visitor to admire every decision made by someone protecting a crop. A livelihood is not a permission slip for doing anything at all. Equally, sympathy costs very little when you can leave before the damaged trees are counted. We have to ask which precautions work, what they cost and what suffering they cause. These questions are slower than choosing a side.

Last night the torch caught a pair of eyes beyond the new fence. The animal waited, then turned towards the scrub. I was relieved. I also knew it would need food somewhere. In the morning, the trays in the shop looked as orderly as ever. I wrote another variety name on a card, then went back to check the lower gate.

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 the tensions between human needs and the lives of wild animals.

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