«Hunting Addicts» Receive Wild Boar Enclosure in the Canton of Zurich

Hunting dogs are allegedly necessary for hobby hunters to regulate the wild boar population.

But the dogs must first learn how to behave around these formidable animals. In Elgg ZH, a «hunting dog acclimatization enclosure» is now being built for this purpose. Animal welfare advocates long opposed this training facility, because professional game wardens — as in the Canton of Geneva — can manage without such acts of animal cruelty.

Animal welfare advocates strongly opposed the construction. They wanted to prevent the training facility because they reject driven hunts for wild boar. Such a facility is also unnecessary, they argued. The Canton of Zurich nevertheless intends to go ahead with the project. To prevent mutual injuries, the dogs must be acclimatized to the wild boar and learn the necessary respect during animal fights — which violate, among other things, the Animal Welfare Act.

The substandard federal hunting ordinance obliges cantons to ensure appropriate training and testing of dogs for their animal-cruelty hobby. No such facility had previously existed in Switzerland. Now one is to be built in a forest near Elgg, close to Winterthur. Everything that violates animal welfare is considered acceptable hunting practice. Hobby hunters in Switzerland receive thousands of reports and fines every year for breaking the law. In the Canton of Grisons alone, there are over 1’000 each year! Members and hobby hunters of the JagdSchweiz association are thus implicated, through their cantonal associations, in thousands of legal violations every year — including arms smuggling, poaching, violations of hunting law, environmental law, and more.

Criminal complaints are also currently pending against the Jagd Zürich association and the Hunting & Fisheries Administration of the Canton of Zurich, due to scandalous environmental pollution in a nature reserve protected under federal law.

Building director and hobby hunter Markus Kägi and department head Urs Philipp have spent a great deal of time and energy (taxpayers' money) in recent years turning the Canton of Zurich into a playground for hunters from near and far.

Wild boars from animal parks

The investment costs for the “wild boar familiarization enclosure” amount to approximately 200’000 Swiss francs, to be paid by taxpayers. Work on the fencing is planned for the coming winter. The wild boars will move in during spring. These come exclusively from animal parks. The facility is to be put into operation gradually in the summer of 2019.

The training of the dogs is handled by a «specialist». The familiarization takes place in several phases and is guided by the temperament, character, and training level of the dog. This is intended to ensure that the training does not lead to unreasonable stress for either the dogs or the wild boars.

Wild boars cause damage

The wild boar population in the Swiss Midlands has continued to grow in recent years, despite the tall tales of hobby hunters. The animals are causing ever greater damage to agricultural crops and increasingly within residential areas as well.

For hunting purposes, the amateurs involved in the militia hunting system now need hunting dogs that can flush out wild boar in dense undergrowth, producing even more animal cruelty and chaos.

The Canton of Geneva is decades ahead with its modern wildlife management system using game wardens.There, no driven hunts or push hunts with barking hunting dogs are needed, even though large numbers of wild animals always flee from the surrounding areas into the Canton of Geneva and stay there when driven hunts similar to those in the Canton of Zurich are carried out in France or the Canton of Vaud. The population of Geneva would certainly never approve of a wild boar enclosure in the canton.

Furthermore, experience from Germany (where there are at least 19 enclosures distributed across the entire country) shows that even wild boar enclosures cannot sustainably reduce agricultural “damage” or wild boar populations to the desired extent. To this day, there is no scientific evidence that hunting wild boar with dogs achieves the goal of “regulation” (more) effectively — even though hunting associations and authorities repeatedly claim otherwise! There is absolutely no need to hunt wild boar specifically with dogs exhibiting abnormal behavior, behavior that is further encouraged through training.

From an animal welfare perspective, work in wild boar enclosures and artificial earth facilities must be clearly rejected.This is a training method using live, hand-tame animals that are taken from the wild or from zoos, spend their lives in an enclosure, and are killed once they are no longer useful or deemed unsuitable.

Animals in such facilities experience mortal fear and stress anew with every training session. What is meant by “species-appropriate care and animal welfare” in this context is barely worth imagining. In addition to the risk of injury from a boar that stands its ground, wild boar hunts and training sessions in wild boar enclosures also carry a considerable risk of dogs becoming infected with the deadly Aujeszky's disease virus (pseudorabies)! In 2016, new cases of this epidemic occurred in Germany. Wild boar enclosures attract trouble and problems.

Practice has shown that severe injuries to animals during work in the enclosure — similar to what occurs in artificial earth facilities with foxes — occur repeatedly, or at the latest during the hunt itself.

The Zürich Animal Welfare organization rejects the facility because 1. stress and risk of injury for wild boar and dogs, and 2. because animal welfare organizations fundamentally consider the approach of such facilities to be wrong: Animal welfare advocates are convinced that driven/battue hunts cause significantly more animal suffering due to the many missed shots than targeted shots from stalking hunts, and 3. such facilities are available in neighboring countries.

The wild boar Guantanamo is the best way to ruin the reputation of the municipality of Elgg . The municipality of Hefenhofen in the canton of Thurgau. When you hear the name Hefenhofen today, you inevitably think of Tianimal cruelty, failure on the part of the municipality, canton, and veterinary office. The actions of hobby hunters in the enclosure and, at the latest, during hunting, are diametrically opposed to Swiss animal welfare laws, including Art. 26 and Art. 4.