Sentence Correction (SC) | In some types of pine tree, a thick layer of needles protects the buds

I noticed that some have mentioned that they ruled out D due to its use of the passive voice.

I didn't actually eliminate it for this reason at all, I just saw a glaring redundancy problem, please could someone tell me if my logic is correct or incorrect (if incorrect, please tell me why)?

The sentence says "Since...., consequently", surely the "consequently" isn't required at all given that the sentence said "since"?
To make matters even worse, the sentence says
...

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