Question

Read the following passage carefully:

I have always maintained that the local bird sanctuary owed its brief, mid-century golden age entirely to my meticulous oversight. When I took the volunteer post of warden, the grounds were a chaotic tangle of untamed brambles and noisy, uncataloged nesting pairs—a state of nature, perhaps, but one completely lacking in intellectual design. My first order of business was the systematic clearing of the underbrush to establish clean, gravel pathways, which naturally required the removal of several old, decaying oaks. If the warblers subsequently ceased their nesting in the western quadrant, it was surely due to the unusually damp spring we suffered that year, rather than the modest alterations to their habitat, as the local amateur society so shrilly claimed. My predecessor had allowed the birds to dictate the terms of the sanctuary; I, however, understood that order is the first law of science. That the town council ultimately chose to rescind my keys was not a reflection on my methods, but a symptom of their provincial inability to appreciate a landscape ordered by reason rather than left to the vulgar whims of wildness.

In the passage, the narrator's explanation for the departure of the warblers primarily reveals the narrator's