In Finland, hunting bounties for pest animals were first introduced in the 1647 hunting law. Avian pests were included in bounty schemes a century later when a price was put on more than 20 species. The list of bounty species varied widely during the next 200 years. We examined the development of bounty schemes in Finnish wildlife management during 1647–1975 with respect to the prevailing attitudes to nature and hunting practices. We surveyed Finnish hunting legislation from the 1300s to the present, and collected hunting bounty data from hunting associations' archives and from statistics published in hunting magazines during the 19th and 20th centuries. Local municipalities and the government, and also hunters' and fishermen's organizations, paid bounties for pest species. Bounties were considered justified for direct and indirect economic, religious and ethical reasons. Organized persecution of pests was considered a necessary component of game management. The ‘golden age’ of bounty schemes from 1898 to the 1920s contributed to local extinctions of both mammalian and avian species. The cessation of law-based bounty schemes in 1975 was preceded by a period of strong environmental thinking, and bounty schemes were widely considered costly, outdated and unethical.

We have investigated the influence of heteroxenous coccidia (Apicomplexa: Eimeriorina) on the predation risk of intermediate hosts. Voles infected with Frenkelia spp. were found more frequently in buzzards' (Buteo buteo) prey than among snap-trapped rodents. To eliminate the possibility of traps selecting for uninfected rodents, a laboratory experiment was performed. Mice experimentally infected with Sarcocystis dispersa seemed to be more likely caught by the final host, the long-eared owl (Asio otus); this result was confirmed by a mathematical model. Field data confirmed the adaptive value of parasite-induced changes. The increase of predation is directed towards the specific final host only or is non-specific. In the populations studied the probability of predation of parasitized individuals by the specific predator was increased.