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An international convention .....

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by buzzdeepak » Mon Jan 14, 2013 3:16 pm
An international convention regulating trade in endangered species, especially bears and tigers, could be significantly weakened were it not for restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

(A) could be significantly weakened were it not for restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.
(B) could be significantly weakened if restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species aren't eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.
(C) couldn't be significantly weakened without restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species being eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.
(D) can't be significantly weakened if restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species are eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.
(E) could be significantly weakened if restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species are eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

I got stuck between B and E....went with B but the OA is E. Please help....

Thanks in advance,
Deepak
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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Mon Jan 14, 2013 3:19 pm
Just to make things easier to parse:

An international convention regulating trade in endangered species, especially bears and tigers, could be significantly weakened were it not for restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

(A) could be significantly weakened were it not for restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

(B) could be significantly weakened if restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species aren't eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

(C) couldn't be significantly weakened without restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species being eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

(D) can't be significantly weakened if restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species are eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.

(E) could be significantly weakened if restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species are eased, warn conservation and animal welfare groups.
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by Bill@VeritasPrep » Mon Jan 14, 2013 3:23 pm
The biggest issue with B and E is meaning.

B says that the convention could be weakened if restrictions are NOT eased, while E says that the convention could be weakened if restrictions are eased.

Which makes more sense? Well, if restrictions on captive breeding are eased, then there may be more endangered animals bred, which would increase the available supply and make regulating trade of such animals harder to regulate.

If the restrictions are NOT eased (i.e. kept the same), then there should be no impact on the convention.
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by Practicegmat » Mon Jan 14, 2013 8:57 pm
Could you please explain why (a) is wrong .

I can say that the international convention could be significantly weakened if it was not for
restrictions on captive breeding of endangered species, but for something else.
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by ceilidh.erickson » Tue Jan 15, 2013 10:55 am
Answer choice A is wrong because the verb tenses do not make sense together. "Could be weakened" implies that the weakening hasn't happened yet, but could in the future. "Were it not" is a conditional about what would have happened in a different scenario. For example, "Were it not for the snowstorm, the school would be open" means that there is a snowstorm, and the school isn't open. But if there weren't a snowstorm, the school would be open.

We can't use "could be weakened" and "were it not" together. We would have to say "would have been weakened were it not..."

Just a note about SC questions in general... the GMAT never uses contractions such as "couldn't" or "aren't" on real SC problems. If you see contractions on practice questions, it could indicate that those practice questions aren't very indicative of the real thing.
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