ON THE EDGE OF EXTINCTION - A - THE TIGER (Panthera tigris)

[Greatearth]

Four Pests Campaign and Great Leap Forward in China

*This image is copyright of its original author

It is about 1.5 meters long South China tiger in Yongchun. Impossible to know its gender, but it was also man-eating tiger. According to statistics from 1953, there were more than 2,000 chineses were attacked by the tiger in both Yongchun and Anxi areas.





This was from Wikipedia, it is some basic history of South China tiger and Chinese
 “Man-eating tiger attacks on humans in South China increased dramatically in the Ming and Qing Dynasties due to the vast human population growth and the consequent encroachment into tiger habitats. About 500 attacks took place during this period, with the average frequency being nearly once a year. According to historical records, all these attacks resulted in deaths numbering from several to over 1000. After the foundation of PRC, deadly tiger attacks could still occur as recently as the 1950s. In 1957, an attack was reported to have killed 32 people in Hunan Province.”



South China tiger was becoming dangerous to human since Ming and Qing dynasty. Developing land and increasing human population started bad influenced for the South China tiger. Most of habitat was destroyed and a few wild prey left in 20th century. That is why tiger attacks were very common in China in mid-1900s. This leaded Mao Zedong to declare war against tiger, leopard, bear, and wolf name Great Leap Forward. I feel Han chinese is indeed uncivilized sometimes (There are 52 different ethnic people in China like Tibetan. Han people are the main Chinese). Especially they are keep using tiger bone, rhino horn, and many other traditional medicine along with vietnamese. Mao should have done better way instead of killing entire animals in China.

It is sad to hear history of the South China tiger, but the most ridiculous thing was killing Eurasian tree sparrow by Four Pests Campaign (rat, fly, mosquito, sparrow). 

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

This bird is Eurasian tree sparrow. It is very cute bird. I think they are still rare in China today. I don’t know in other Asia and Europe, but it’s common bird in Korea.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Mao declared killing these birds, because he believed sparrow is eating many crops. Entire Chinese, even including adults and children hunt this bird by Mao’s campaign. Above photo is amount of Eurasian tree sparrows were killed by Chinese per day.

Thus, Eurasian tree sparrow heading extinct since chinese killed 210,000,000 (!) numbers of Eurasian tree sparrows just one year of 1958 by Mao’s campaign. A problem was that this bird was main predator of insect like grasshopper. These birds are indeed eating a rice and other crops, but their main prey was crop eating insects. A tremendous numbers of crop eating insects appeared in China and ate all of crops since Eurasian tree sparrows were extinct. China had to face horrible famine name Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961), approximately maximum 40,000,000 Chinese died in 1959-1961 after they wiped out tree sparrow.

I think they changed to cockroaches, but I don’t think they can’t control about this along with mosquito and fly. I highly doubt cockroach will become extinct until the Sun will become red giant star.

It is a good example of not to destroy nature order. Reply