In the 1950’s China was working to transform from an agricultural society to a communist industrial society. Their leader, Mao Ze Dong, wanted to completely reshape society, and his efforts didn’t stop with humans. One of the strangest reforms of this period was an order to exterminate sparrows and other pests.
In 1958, Mao declared war on sparrows, mosquitos, flies, and rats. The sparrow, in particular, was marked for death because it ate the food grown by villagers around the country. According to some scientists, each sparrow ate 4.5 kg of food a year, which was 4.5 kg less food for people. They calculated that for every million birds killed, there would be food for 60,000 villagers. While the sparrow was historically celebrated in paintings and poetry, Mao saw the sparrow as a hungry pest and thief that needed to be wiped out. “Damned Creature. Criminal for thousands of years. Today’s payment day,” he said.
Mao mobilized the whole country in his war against the sparrow. People from Shanghai to Kunming banged on pots, pans, and drums all day long to scare the birds out of the trees. Others shot them with guns and slingshots. Eventually, the birds fell out of the sky due to exhaustion.
Some estimate that millions of birds were killed during this time, but it was a short-lived victory. While the sparrows did eat the farmer’s crops, they also ate lots of insects such as locusts. Without the sparrows to keep these insects in check, even more crops were lost to hungry locusts. Mao eventually realized his mistake and took sparrows off the death list, but by that time it was too late. There were efforts to import sparrows from Russia, but by then the damage was done.
While it’s now common knowledge that humans live in a delicate balance with all forms of life on this earth, humanity has a long history of hubris. Mao was just one of many leaders in many countries around the world who have foolishly tried to dominate nature.
As the Native American, Chief Seattle, once said:
Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect.
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