A Misguided Program to Fight Snake Infestations
Back in the days of the British Raj, India’s colonial rulers were faced with a massive infestation of poisonous cobra snakes in the city of Delhi. To fight it, they came up with turned out in hindsight to have been a misguided scheme. The authorities offered a bounty for every dead cobra, payable upon delivery of its skin to designated officials. The plan seemed to work great, and before long, natives thronged to the drop off points whose store rooms soon bulged cobra skins. Unfortunately, the incentive scheme did not seem have a noticeable effect on the city’s cobra population.
No matter how many cobra skins were delivered to the authorities, Delhi seemed to be just as infested with the deadly snakes. City officials eventually figured out why: many locals had become cobra breeders. Since the bounty on the snake skin was greater than the cost of raising a cobra, the British had unintentionally created a new cash crop. So the British canceled the reward plan, and ceased to pay out bounties for cobra skins. As seen below, that made things even worse.