[network2592]

A better solution could be hacking the supply side by flooding the market with fake ivory indistinguishable from real ivory. The price of ivory should go down. There will be less financial incentive for the poaching and bribing. Some biologists are working on this angle [1].

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/faking-elephan...

[Maursault]

This. But also putting a bounty on poachers that exceeds the value of ivory, make killing poachers so profitable that for every poacher, there are 20 bounty hunters. Also, education. Also, counter intelligence (ingrain societies that value ivory with rumors that touching ivory causes flaccidity and ruins libido, which is highly contagious, etc.)

Also, why don't we just take all the elephants and rhinos from them, establish them in the American west? We can deal with the ecological issues.

[Verdex]

"No, no, poaching elephants is actually really safe."

"But, but the bounty? Poacher heads go for ten times what ivory goes for."

"That, look, scary stories that the government has to tell to make the voters think that they're doing something to help those poor defenseless elephants. Scare tactics. Think about it, if they really were going to do anything about the poachers, then they wouldn't be putting up some bounty against poaching. It's an admission that they can't and they won't do anything to stop us. Besides, factory has been shut down for three weeks and isn't opening any time soon. You want to put food on the table or not?"

<LATER>

A rifle shot rings out across the early morning plains. An elephant collapses to the ground and breathes its last breath.

"Change of plans Fred, we've got video evidence that you just poached an elephant. I hear poacher heads go for ten times what ivory does."

"You said the bounty was nothing but propaganda!"

"Yeah, good thing there's no bounty on liars."

A second rifle shot rings out across the early morning plains. "Now, sure would be a shame if all that ivory goes to waste."

[patentatt]

Unfortunately this is accurate, much like the bounties put on certain people within Afghanistan where it sure seems like it was abused by certain local tribes to take out some rival and profit from the US Government in the process. In areas where you'd want to put a bounty on people, there's bound to be enough corruption and misaligned incentives to make it not work the way you hoped.

[alistairSH]

That. Plus...

Poacher Hunter to the paying authority: "Bob was a poacher. I didn't shoot him while he walked home from work. I promise."

[itsyaboi]

A long-winded example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive#The_origina...

[trasz]

Your situation is still 50% success, although with collateral damage (the single killed elephant).

[Verdex]

"Oh, we call him the poacher punisher. Poachers killed his family, or at least that's the story. He's killed hundreds of poachers, maybe even thousands. In fact, he once killed an entire village of poachers. Men, women, children, dogs, poachers all of them. At least according to the poacher punisher. He brought back the ivory he said he found on them. It's how he made his first million."

A man kills an elephant with a rifle and then shoots the rifle with another rifle. He brings in the first rifle and gets a reward. Then he sells the ivory and gets a second reward. I'm not convinced that this situation is any improved (and certainly not a 50% success) if instead of this farce he instead tricks someone who wasn't going to shoot any elephants into shooting an elephant.

[bombcar]

> We can deal with the ecological issues.

This is a refrain heard so often (as a wild herd of fifty thousand elephants goes trumpeting through downtown Salt Lake City).

[Maursault]

13,000 years ago, very elephant-like creatures roamed N. America.[1] So the ecological issues are not going to be a big problem. Besides, elephants stampeding through Salt Lake City is not an example of an ecological issue. Call Animal Control.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomphothere