10-Million Switzerland: What Wildlife Would Have to Say

The sober figures leave little room for appeasement.

Every year in Switzerland, around 17.6 square kilometers of land disappear under asphalt, concrete, and buildings. That corresponds to nearly seven soccer fields per day. Between 1985 and 2018, settlement areas grew by 31 percent, and residential zones even by 61 percent. During the same period, about 1,143 square kilometers of agricultural land were lost — over seven percent.

At the end of 2025, the permanent resident population stood at around 9.1 million people. Since the introduction of free movement of persons in 2002, it has grown by approximately 1.7 million people, mainly through immigration. In peak years, annual net immigration matches the population of a city like Lucerne.

Fenced-in mountains above the tree line

While square meter after square meter is built over in the valleys, the pressure shifts to the mountains. There, a different reality awaits: summer pasturing and hobby sheep farming have turned large parts of the alpine meadows into fenced parcels, in many places extending above the tree line. Where flocks of sheep and herds of cattle graze, there is often hardly any space or food left for chamois, ibex, and red deer. Diseases can jump from livestock to wildlife.

Even Pro Natura, an organization traditionally favorable toward alpine farming, states in a 2024 assessment: above the tree line, where the majority of sheep are summer-grazed, there is no encroaching forest that needs to be held back through grazing. The main ecological argument for stocking with livestock thus falls away in precisely the elevation zone where conflicts with wildlife are greatest. By convention, the good grass belongs to the livestock. The wild animals are pushed aside, into steeper slopes, into forests, into habitats that are suboptimal for them.

Wildlife corridors: two thirds damaged or interrupted

What is fenced off on the ground is fragmented across the landscape. Of Switzerland's supra-regional wildlife corridors, only about one third remain intact. 16 percent are considered completely interrupted. In the densely populated Central Plateau, the average mesh size — meaning the size of contiguous areas — is now just 2.7 square kilometers. Between 2014 and 2020 alone, this fragmentation worsened by a further seven percent. For species that migrate seasonally, from amphibians to red deer, this is a creeping catastrophe.

The federal government actively subsidizes this development. In 2024, it identified around twelve billion francs in direct subsidies that harm biodiversity. Distributed across agriculture, transport, settlement, and energy production.

Four percent for wildlife

Anyone who wants to understand the balance of power between humans and nature need not count. Weighing is enough. A study by Bar-On, Phillips, and Milo published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018, updated by Greenspoon and colleagues in 2023, paints a clear picture. Across the entire Earth, wild mammals still account for only about four percent of global mammal biomass. The rest is divided between humans, at around 36 percent, and their livestock, at around 60 percent.

In absolute figures: livestock worldwide amount to about 630 million tons, humans to around 390 million tons, and all wild land mammals combined to about 22 million tons. Since 1850, global mammal biomass has quadrupled overall. Not because of more wildlife, but because of more livestock and more humans.

Switzerland is not an exception to this trend, but a more pronounced version of it. In a very confined space, population, construction activity, and livestock numbers are growing, while wildlife habitats are shrinking, becoming fragmented, and being pushed into suboptimal elevations. A ratio of 96 to 4 is not a healthy ecological balance. It is a diagnosis.

What a cap at ten million would mean

The Sustainability Initiative demands that the permanent resident population not exceed ten million people by 2050. If necessary, with measures in the area of asylum, family reunification, or by terminating the free movement of persons agreement with the EU. From a purely ecological perspective, the argument is arithmetical: fewer people, less pressure on land, water, and habitat. Every square meter not built upon remains available as habitat, as a water reservoir, as a filter.

Centre Party Council of States member Heidi Z’graggen justified her announced "yes" to the initiative in the NZZ in April 2026 with the observation that it is «really insane how cramped and dense everything has become». Wildlife share this perception without words, but through daily behavioral changes.

What the Federal Council and Parliament argue in response

The Federal Council and the parliamentary majority reject the initiative. They warn of economic damage, of jeopardizing the bilateral path with the EU, and of harming Switzerland's humanitarian tradition. They point to targeted measures against the consequences of population growth in spatial planning, transport, and land strategy. The first SRG survey of May 2026 shows a stalemate: 47 percent would vote yes.

From the perspective of wild animals, the voting behavior is clear: they would raise their hand if they could. The question is not whether they can. The question is whether voters will include their interests on the ballot.

More on habitat, self-regulation, and the role of humans in wildlife management in the dossier Self-regulation of wildlife populations.

Sources

• Federal Chancellery, Explanations on the popular initiative "No 10-Million Switzerland!", admin.ch, as of May 2026
• FOEN, Soil: The most important facts in brief, and FOEN, Net zero soil consumption
• FSO, Land use statistics 1985 to 2018, and FSO, Settlement areas
• Pro Natura, The wolf and biodiversity in the Swiss Alps, an assessment, 2024
• Pro Natura, Land consumption in four figures, 2023
• Forum Biodiversity Switzerland, Report 2026
• Naturschutz.ch, How is biodiversity faring in Switzerland, April 2026
• SRF, First SRG survey on the votes of 14 June 2026
• NZZ, Interview with Heidi Z’graggen on the sustainability initiative, 25 April 2026
• FDJP, Federal Council press release on the popular initiative "No 10-Million Switzerland", 16 March 2026