Laudator Temporis Acti

Allan Savory, Holistic Management: A New Framework for Decision Making (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999), p. 173:

In my Game Department days in Zambia, I had the task of paying out a government bonus on bushpigs killed by villagers over and above those my staff killed in control work.These bonuses were paid out on my behalf by the District Commissioners in each district as the country was so large. Once a year I visited the District Commissioners, counted the tails collected as tokens of payments made, and then reimbursed their department from mine. At one station I found that the District Commissioner had paid out a very large sum to the local villagers. Indeed, he had an enormous pile of tails to prove the number of pigs killed and paid for. Much to his dismay, I and my game scouts, sat down and inspected each tail carefully as we counted. Slowly we sorted out a small pile of genuine tails from a mountain of clever counterfeits. The villagers had economized on labor and found it paid better to spend their time making tails from parts of the hide which they twisted, trimmed and dried, than to actually hunt pigs.