An animal cull that cost millions of human lives

[Catherine]

Humans make decisions to cull animals without really understanding the consequences. In China, in 1958, it was decided to cull 4 species. In particular Sparrows were targeted. Sparrows did eat some of the grain so it was decided to get rid of them. Hundreds of millions of sparrows were killed. Then the locusts that the sparrows used to eat, multiplied and destroyed the harvest. This caused a massive famine and millions of humans died. They had to import 250,000 sparrows from Russia to restore the balance. There were other factors in the crop failure, like droughts and floods, but the real problem was the ecological imbalance caused by the sparrow cull.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/chi...1f6&ei=104


We really don't understand the complexity of ecosystems enough for some of the drastic changes we make.
We wipe out a species and then have to put it back to stabilize things. This was a massive failure, but there have been others on a smaller scale.
Putting the wolves back in Yellowstone National Park stabilized the area. 
They had to put the sparrows back. Other places are putting back keystone species.

Maybe we should stop culling and eliminating species in the first place. It hasn't been one of our more successful ideas.