Austria Talk: Why Do We Hunt?
127,000 hunting licenses were issued in Austria last year, only a small portion of which went to professional hunters. Most people hunt as a side occupation or as a hobby. Documentary films and a panel discussion on ORF III's themed Monday evening explored and questioned the purpose of hunting in our time. Is hunting necessary forest and wildlife management, or merely bloody
127’000 hunting licenses were issued in Austria last year, only a small portion of which went to professional hunters. Most people hunt as a hobby or alongside other occupations.
Documentary films and a panel discussion on ORF III's themed Monday evening explored and questioned the purpose of hunting in our time.
Is recreational hunting a necessary form of forest and wildlife management, or merely bloody “fun”? This is the question debated by Marlene Kaufmann and Reiner Reitsamer together with their guests Maximilian Mayr-Melnhof (recreational hunter), Roland Düringer (actor and cabaret artist), Sigrun Rossmanith (psychologist), and Christian Nittmann (Initiative for the Abolition of Hunting in Austria).
Hunting Fever in Salzburg
The topic of “hunting” is booming in Salzburg. Every year, visitor numbers at the Salzburg hunting fair «Hohe Jagd» — one of the largest in Europe — continue to rise, and the number of people sitting their hunting exams is particularly high in Salzburg as well.
Recreational hunting is not only popular, however, but above all deeply controversial. Last year, a dispute between animal rights activists and Salzburg hunting estate owner Max Mayr-Melnhof over his wild boar enclosure hunt in Salzburg's Anthering escalated into full-blown legal proceedings.
The fact that recreational hunting is not solely about necessary wildlife management and stewardship, but also about trophies, is evidenced by the thriving business of taxidermists and, above all, the flourishing multimillion-dollar trade in big-game hunting abroad. More on the animal welfare issues of recreational hunting and on hunting myths.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. 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.
