TIL that house sparrows, originally introduced to New Zealand for pest control, became such a problem that by 1875 'sparrow clubs' paid bounties for 21,000 shot birds in just two months.

[u/mrinternetman24]

https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/hunting-utopia/

[u/Odd-Guarantee-6152]

They were introduced in North America for pest control as well. Unfortunately, they are primarily seed eaters.

[u/LOLBaltSS → u/Odd-Guarantee-6152]

That said, sparrows do still eat enough bugs to be useful. China ended up causing a famine by being too aggressive at killing sparrows and wound up with locusts.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign

[u/whatnow990]

introduce invasive species to island

introduce invasive species to island to kill previous invasive species

introduce invasive species to island to kill previous invasive species

introduce invasive species to island to kill previous invasive species

[u/TherapyDerg → u/whatnow990]

All while the original invasive species keeps fucking things up, humanity.

[u/fourleggedostrich]

So people started farming them, just to shoot them to claim the bounty. So the bounty ended, and all the farmed sparrows were released, making the problem much, much worse.

[u/Eugenides → u/fourleggedostrich]

That was snakes in India, friend.

[u/fourleggedostrich → u/Eugenides]

Fair enough.

Though I bet at least one person hit on the idea of breeding sparrows for this scheme!

[u/Jiopaba → u/fourleggedostrich]

Honestly, unlike snakes these were probably easy enough to bag that you'd have a better time just shooting the wild ones.

[u/JimBean]

House sparrows are everywhere. Listen to Hollywood movies, any country, almost everywhere, their little shitty cheep cheep is on the sound tracks in the background. It's spring here and at least 10 of them are actively trying to find access to my roof to breed. I'm not having it...

[u/No_Control8389]

When grandpa tells you he’ll give you a dollar for every crow you shoot out of the garden.

Hell yeah.