Hundreds of bats culled in Indonesia to ‘prevent spread’ of the coronavirus
The Bats Should NOT Be Exterminated
When Sparrows Fall: China’s Great Famine | Asian Century
In 1958 Mao Zedong ordered all the sparrows to be killed because they
ate too much grain. This caused one of the worst environmental
disasters in history
According to Mao Zedong, sparrows were getting in the way of the
economic development of the People’s Republic of China. During the
next three years, 45 million people died in a famine caused by
economic mismanagement, environmental disaster, and state terror.
Sparrows ate pests such as locusts, and after the campaign, the
locusts lost their major predator. This meant that killing the
sparrows was counter-productive. The sparrows, it seemed, didn’t only
eat grain seeds. They also ate insects.
Locust populations boomed and they ate everything in their path. Grain
production in most rural areas collapsed and a massive famine began.
People ran out of things to eat and millions starved. The official
number of fatalities from the Chinese government was 15 million.
However, it’s estimated by some scholars that the fatalities were as
high as 45 or even 78 million.
h/t dr0id