The cottontail rabbit population in Orange County, California, has increased unchecked in recent years as a result of the removal of the native fox population and the clearing of surrounding woodlands.

(A) years as a result of the removal of
(B) years as a result of removing
(C) years, resulting from the removing of
(D) years, which is a result of removing
(E) years, which is a result of the removal of

While the OA is A, I think C is a better parallelizm with 'the removing of'. Can anyone help? Many thnks!

P.S. If I guess correctly - it is never a natural way to say 'the removing of something' - can native speakers recognize this mistake immidiately?

parallelism is also there in A " the removal (n) of and the clearing (n) of"

"as a result of" is better than "resulting from"

I want to clarify two points:
1. whether 'as a result of' is better than 'resulting from', at least in gmat?
2. whether it is incorrect or unnatrual to say 'the removing of sth'?

Besides, are there any tips for judging whether or not things like 'the clearing of sth', 'the removing of sth', etc, are correct or natural?

Thanks a lot!

Hi sanj, I just forgot to thank you ;) but I still have those 2 questions

(2) first
removal is better.
there are a bunch of words like these, with specific noun forms that, simply because they exist, are considered better than the corresponding gerund (-ing) forms. notable among this class of nouns are the '-al' forms, like removal, betrayal, etc.

unfortunately, there are no general tips of the form you're soliciting; such are the joys of the english language. the closest i can get to a general rule is this: if a special noun form exists, use it. if not, use the -ing form.
as for your examples above, you wouldn't want 'removing' because removal is a better substitute. clearing, though, is fine because there's no specially designated noun form for that one.

(1)
you can't use 'resulting from' as an adverbial modifier, as is done here. in general, 'resulting from' is only used as an adjective modifier, almost always without a comma, as in
the pollution resulting from the chemical spill forced all the local residents to evacuate.

Thanks Ron.

But is the clearance the n. of clear? Why use clearing instead of clearance?

hmm.
i've never actually seen 'clearance' used in that way, but a quick check of the dictionary shows that it can be. still, at least in american usage, it's largely used for physical height clearances (this parking garage has a 7-foot clearance) or for retail sales (these items are on clearance). there are exceptions, such as in medicine (where 'clearance' refers to the rate at which the kidneys clean substances out of the blood), but this is what i've observed.

still, you can't argue with the gmat. it will always win the argument, so there's no point in trying. sorry!