10-Million Switzerland: What Wildlife Would Say About It

The sobering figures leave little room for reassurances.

Each year in Switzerland, around 17.6 square kilometers of land disappear beneath asphalt, concrete and buildings. That equates to nearly seven soccer fields per day. Between 1985 and 2018, settlement areas grew by 31 percent, and residential areas by as much as 61 percent. During the same period, roughly 1,143 square kilometers of agricultural land were lost — more than seven percent.

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

Fenced-off mountains, even above the tree line

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

Even Pro Natura, an organization traditionally well-disposed toward alpine farming, notes in a 2024 assessment: Above the tree line, where the majority of sheep are summered, there is no encroaching forest that would need to be held back through grazing. The main ecological argument for stocking with livestock thus falls away precisely at the elevation where conflicts with wildlife are greatest. The good grass belongs, by convention, to the livestock. Wildlife is pushed aside — into steeper slopes, into forests, into habitats that are suboptimal for them.

Wildlife corridors: two-thirds damaged or severed

What is fenced in on the ground is fragmented across the landscape. Of Switzerland’s supra-regional wildlife corridors, only about one-third remain intact. Sixteen percent are considered completely severed. 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 does not need to count. Weighing is enough. A study by Bar-On, Phillips, and Milo, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2018 and updated by Greenspoon and colleagues in 2023, paints a clear picture. Across the entire Earth, wild mammals still account for around four percent of global mammalian biomass. The rest is shared by 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, total global mammalian biomass has quadrupled. Not because of more wildlife, but because of more livestock and more humans.

Switzerland is not an exception to this trend but an intensified version of it. In the tightest of spaces, population, construction activity, and livestock numbers are growing, while wildlife habitats shrink, become fragmented, and are pushed into suboptimal high-altitude areas. 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, through measures in the asylum area, in family reunification, or by terminating the Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons 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.

Center Party Council of States member Heidi Z'graggen justified her announced Yes to the initiative in April 2026 in the NZZ with the observation that it is "truly insane how cramped and dense everything has become." Wildlife share this perception without words, but with daily changes in behavior.

What the Federal Council and Parliament put forward in opposition

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 the humanitarian tradition of Switzerland. They point to targeted measures against the consequences of population growth in spatial planning, transport, and soil strategy. The first SRG survey of May 2026 shows a tie: 47 percent would vote yes.

From the perspective of wild animals, 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 carry their interests with them onto 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 of the popular initiative "No 10-Million Switzerland!", admin.ch, as of May 2026
• FOEN, Soil: The most important facts at a glance, 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, a classification, 2024
• Pro Natura, Land consumption in four figures, 2023
• Forum Biodiversity Switzerland, Report 2026
• Naturschutz.ch, What is the state of biodiversity 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