Thanks for the question! So let’s recap this argument real quick. We’re told first about some so-called environmentalists, who argue that the Golden Lake Development would interfere with bird-migration patterns. The author then starts talking about her own opinion, saying that actually, these people always object to every development proposal brought before the council, so they’re actually just anti-development and anti-progress. Thus, she concludes, the environmentalists’ claim should be dismissed.
So now we’re asked for a necessary assumption in this argument. Remember, for strengthen with necessary premise questions, we can use the negation test and see if the negation of the answer choice ruins the argument. If it doesn’t, then it’s not a necessary assumption. So now let’s take a look at (D): the council has no reason to object to the proposed Golden Lake Development other than concern about the development’s effect on bird-migration patterns. The negation of this is that the council doe shave some other reason to object to the proposed Golden Lake Development other than the bird patterns. Does this weaken the argument that the environmentalists don’t actually care about the birds? No, it doesn’t, it’s completely irrelevant. And so we know that this isn’t something that the argument has to assume, and so (D) is incorrect.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
