9. Delhi’s Snake Infestation Skyrocketed After the British Cancelled Their Eradication Plan’s Incentives
When the British authorities in Delhi finally realized what was going on, and how their incentive scheme for eradicating cobras was being gamed, they canceled the plan. However, stopping the payment of bounties for cobra skins turned out to be the authorities’ second mistake, and made the problem worse yet.
Without the bounties, cobra skins and captive cobras were now worthless. So Delhi’s cobra farmers did the economically sensible thing and released the snakes back into the wild. The “wild” in this case was the city of Delhi. The snake infestation was increased by orders of magnitude, and Delhi wound up with many times more cobras than it had possessed before the authorities launched their ill-advised plan.