390 READINGS IN BIOLOGICAL SCIENCfi 



KILLING FOR GRAFT 



Bounties 



The belief is held that putting a price on the head of any species is a 

 certain way to reduce its numbers — and with rare species it certainly works 

 out that way. Often, however, frauds connected with bounty laws pre- 

 vent the accomplishment of the purposes of the legislation. Among the 

 more flagrant frauds is the manufacture of "scalps"; where the require- 

 ments do not strictly define the part of the animal to be presented for 

 bounty payment, many "scalps" may be made from a single animal. An- 

 other common way of "beating" bounty laws is to import "scalps," per- 

 haps from another State; and what is in eff'ect the same thing, is the paying 

 of a bounty on a migratory species. The supposed benefit, were there any, 

 to be derived from the killing of the creature, would accrue to some state 

 other than the one paying the bounty. For instance, it is altogether proba- 

 ble that crows killed for bounty in northern winter roosts are mostly nest- 

 ing inhabitants of Canada; a state paying a bounty on such crows, would 

 benefit (if there were any benefit) another nation. 



Notwithstanding these objections to bounty laws, in 1935 twenty-eight 

 states still retained these archaic and harmful provisions. For common 

 species, the usual result of bounty laws, because of defects in their adminis- 

 tration, is the continued payment year after year of about the same number 

 of bounties, showing that the procedure is upon a cropping basis, and no 

 reduction in numbers is being accomplished. Where rare species are con- 

 cerned, the bounty is higher, the incentive to profit by it is much greater, 

 and the effect of the law is toward elimination of rare animals. 



When species already have difficulty in maintaining themselves, bounties 

 are a finishing stroke. States usually deny that their object is the extermina- 

 tion of any creature, but nevertheless bounties are actually exterminating 

 numerous species. So, from the state's point of view, if their denial is sin- 

 cere, why are bounties paid? Our forefathers trapped an occasional weasel 

 that molested poultry, or shot an occasional fox for the same offense. They 

 did not think of rushing to authorities for aid, or having "control" subsi- 

 dized by the state. No, these refinements were left for their more politically 

 minded, and truly, even if unconsciously, communistic descendants. 



As graft, bounties are nothing to brag about; they are, moreover, ecologi- 

 cally unwise and economically unsound; they are without warrant when 

 they concern animals with pelts of high value, the incentive for the de- 

 struction of which is already so great as to threaten the existence of the 

 species. 



Bounty payments are entirely indefensible; by their means unique and 

 interesting species are, here and now, being exterminated, being banished 

 forever from the land of the living. 



