Canton of Aargau reduces lease fees for recreational hunters
On 27 August 2025, the cantonal government of Aargau set the annual lease fee total as well as the territory boundaries for the new hunting lease period 2027–2034. It was decided to reduce annual revenues from hunting leases by 100'000 francs to 1.1 million francs going forward.
The current lease period in the canton of Aargau runs until 31 December 2026, during which annual revenues stood at 1.2 million francs.
The cantonal government justifies the reduction of 100’000 francs by citing the increasing effort that recreational hunters must expend. The conditions for practising hunting have become more difficult.
Modern recreational hunters use highly sophisticated equipment such as sound amplification devices, night vision devices, drones, binoculars, thermal imaging cameras, scent eliminators, GPS trackers, etc., to compensate for their inadequacies. These technologies enable recreational hunters to observe wildlife more effectively and hunt more efficiently, since hardly any recreational hunter would be capable of making a kill like a true hunter from an indigenous people. Recreational hunting in the 21st century has become more unfair, with wildlife bearing the consequences.
In the disarray in which nature finds itself after decades of stewardship and management by such recreational hunters, the proportion of threatened species is, according to the United Nations, higher in Switzerland than in any other country in the world. Recreational hunters have been creating an ecological imbalance in the cultivated landscape for decades, with sometimes dramatic consequences (protective forests, disease, agricultural damage, and much more).
The cantonal government rewards the great commitment of the hunting community and reduces the total annual lease fees to 1.1 million francs.
Alongside the financial readjustment, the boundaries of the hunting territories were also revised. From spring 2026, the now totalling 174 hunting territories and 2 protected reserves (specifically: the waterfowl and migratory bird reserves at Klingnauer Stausee and Flachsee) will be publicly tendered for lease, the canton states in a press release.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.
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.
