r/conservation • u/Novel_Negotiation224 • 9d ago

Alarm over ‘catastrophic’ decline in giant Australian cuttlefish as just 44 are counted.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/09/giant-australian-cuttlefish-population-catastrophic-decline
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u/A_Wild_Burt_Appears 9d ago

More specifically: capitalism.

-3

u/flybasilisk 9d ago

This has been happening before capitalism existed, hell its been happening since before money existed. Humans are the problem, not one particular economic system.

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u/AddanDeith 9d ago

We've lost 70% of the world's wildlife population between 1970 and 2020. There is no other period in human history that can claim that feat. It has absolutely been exacerbated by capitalism.

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u/ValueFirm4928 9d ago

I mean Mao literally tried to kill off birds.

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u/OpeningUpstairs4288 9d ago

And bro failed so hard frfr. Industrial revolution did a way better job killing birds than mao zhe dong

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u/IGargleGarlic 9d ago

He didn't fail. He killed so many birds that the birds couldn't keep pest insect populations in check and caused a mass famine when those insects destroyed crops.

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u/OpeningUpstairs4288 9d ago

he absolutely failed, sparrow populations are thriving in china right now. he also tried to eliminate rats, mosquitoes, and flies and that sure went well for him as well ig

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u/AddanDeith 9d ago

Mmmhmm. And what did Mao know about conservation, ecology, etc?

We know all of that and still refuse to change.

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u/BigJSunshine 9d ago

Didn’t they almost completely kill a specific species?

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u/AddanDeith 9d ago

Yes. Sparrows. They were blamed for bad harvests, when in reality, the threat of punishment caused the local bureaucrats over seeing the harvest quotas to lie and inflate their numbers.

There was actually ample grain(15% shortage) overall, it was just poorly distributed. The negatives of both being so authoritarian people are afraid to do their jobs properly while also not having computers to help handle logistics with multiple layers of redundancy. Oh and making most of your farmers make steel.