France paid dolphin hunters in 1865; study finds first recorded dolphin bounty

In 1865, the French government began paying people to kill dolphins in the Mediterranean Sea, offering twenty-five francs for each animal. Officials introduced the reward to protect fisheries, because fishing communities believed dolphins were emptying the sea of fish and tearing their nets. A major review of bounty programmes, published in 2026, identifies it as the first recorded dolphin bounty. The story is an example of how people have tried to solve economic problems by paying citizens to kill wildlife, and of how often such schemes have produced consequences that nobody planned for. Here is what happened and what history teaches.How the 1865 French dolphin bounty in the Mediterranean Sea paid twenty-five francs per animalThe French scheme worked like a classic bounty. The government offered a fixed cash payment, twenty-five francs, to anyone who killed a dolphin in the Mediterranean. The aim was to reduce dolphin numbers and, with them, the harm that fishing communities blamed on the animals. The review titled ‘Society’s struggle with unwanted species: what centuries of history reveal about species bounty programs’ documents the scheme does not report how many dolphins were k...