Back in the 1990s, ground squirrels were briefly fashionable pets, but their popularity came to an abrupt end after an incident at Schiphol Airport on the outskirts of Amsterdam. In April 1999, a cargo of 440 of the rodents arrived on a KLM flight from Beijing, without the necessary import papers. Because of this, they could not be forwarded on to the customer in Athens. But nobody was able to correct the error and send them back either. What could be done with them? It's hard to think there wasn’t a better solution than the one that was carried out; faced with the paperwork issue, airport staff threw all 440 squirrels into an industrial shredder.

[...]

It turned out that the order to destroy the squirrels had come from the Dutch government's Department of Agriculture, Environment Management and Fishing. However, KLM's management, with the benefit of hindsight, said that [...]

---

First published:
April 22nd, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/nYJaDnGNQGiaCBSB5/accountability-sinks

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

---

Images from the article:

Yellow-bellied marmot perched on rocks with mountain landscape behind.

Apple Podcasts and Spotify do not show images in the episode description. Try Pocket Casts, or another podcast app.

“Accountability Sinks” by Martin Sustrik

LessWrong (30+ Karma)