Grisons: Opposition to Hunting Initiative
The popular initiative launched years ago has already achieved some positive outcomes, but as a package it is dangerous, says the No committee.
Broad-based opposition has formed in Grisons against the cantonal popular initiative «For Nature-Compatible and Ethical Hunting».
Represented on the No committee are the Grisons hunters, fishers, farmers, and forest owners, along with their respective associations. As their spokespersons explained to the media on 28 April 2021 in Chur, they view the popular initiative and its nine demands primarily as a further attack on Grisons’ two-tier hunting system, consisting of regular licensed hunting in September and special hunting from November onwards.
The name of the initiative was deceptive and turned the popular initiative into a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, said Tarzisius Caviezel, president of the cantonal licensed hunters’ association. If the initiative were adopted, the practice of hunting by private hunters would be partly abolished and severely restricted. Ultimately, however, the initiators’ clear goal was the “complete abolition of hunting”, said the hunters’ president.
«The initiative cannot deliver on its promise to make hunting nature-compatible and ethical”, said Stefan Engler, Centre Party member of the Council of States and board member of the forest owners’ association Selva. The specific proposals for a new hunting management plan were no better alternative to the current system, Engler added.
Individual Demands Already in Hunting Legislation
The popular initiative «For Nature-Compatible and Ethical Hunting» had already been submitted by the Wildtierschutz Schweiz association back in 2014. However, due to years of political and legal back-and-forth over its validity, Grisons voters will not be able to decide on the initiative until this coming June.
The initiative has already achieved quite a bit in the years since its launch, explained Franziska Preisig, SP cantonal councillor and member of the parliamentary committee responsible for the initiative. Two of the nine demands have been incorporated into the hunting law.
Since 2017, hunting with traps has been banned and lead ammunition may no longer be used. In addition, hunters must regularly demonstrate their marksmanship.
Other demands had been voluntarily adopted by recreational hunters in their day-to-day hunting practice, said Preisig. Furthermore, demands for a blood alcohol limit for hunters and a ban on bird hunting were meeting with considerable sympathy in parliament and among the public.
«Sympathetic individual points, dangerous overall package»
That is precisely what makes the initiative dangerous, because individual points are appealing, Preisig emphasised. «As a whole package, it is too radical and endangers the well-functioning model of Graubünden hunting», she said. For this reason, the cantonal parliament had unanimously recommended rejection of the popular initiative in February.
The opponents see the demand for a general winter rest period for all wild animals from the beginning of November onwards as a frontal attack on special hunting in particular. This special hunting, however, as Engler explained, serves «the regional fine-tuning of habitat and wildlife».
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
