Eventually the situation got bad enough that the British government decided to offer a bounty for dead snakes. At first this proved to be a success, with many snakes being turned in and a large percentage of the snake population disappearing.
However, people began keeping snakes for breeding purposes—that way they could continually procreate the creatures and kill the Cobra’s for revenue until they were discovered. The British attempted to shut down the snake breeding operations by removing the bounty, upsetting the serpent farmers, who retaliated by setting the now worthless snakes free again. In the end the government came out on the bottom and a larger snake problem than they had started out with.
Another example is found in Vietnam where a government paid people to kill rats who had grown overpopulated. Sly individuals would cut off the tail of the rats so that they could collect their bounty without limiting their future revenue.
