Fact-check: «Hunting in Switzerland protects and benefits»

The brochure by Anton Merkle, President of JagdSchweiz, reads like an advertising brochure for recreational hunting: smooth figures, green triangles, a smiling president and sentences like «Hunting is a responsible activity for nature.» What sounds like high-gloss PR deserves a close look, because between the lines lies a narrative that contradicts scientific findings, ecological facts and ethical standards in essential points.

Claim 1: «The regulation of wildlife populations is a state responsibility – hobby hunters provide professional support»

JagdSchweiz suggests that the 30,000 hobby hunters are a kind of extended arm of the state. In fact, recreational hunting is legally speaking not a nature conservation task, but a use and regulation within wildlife management. According to federal law, no canton in Switzerland has to provide for recreational hunting at all. Each canton can freely decide whether to allow recreational hunting or not – as the example of Geneva since 1974 proves.

In Geneva, around ten state wildlife rangers, sharing three full-time positions, handle the entire wildlife management – without hobby hunters, without licenses, without shooting competitions. Wildlife damage to agriculture is, according to Geneva environmental ranger Gottlieb Dandliker, "practically insignificant." The annual costs for the entire wildlife management amount to around one million francs – equivalent to one cup of coffee per resident. Since the hunting ban, the number of overwintering waterfowl has increased more than tenfold. At the same time, damage figures in Geneva are comparable to those of the canton of Schaffhausen, despite regular and animal-cruel hunting taking place there.

Claim 2: "Hobby hunters advocate for biodiversity and habitats"

The brochure claims that hobby hunters are "primarily" committed to biodiversity and habitats. The reality in Switzerland paints a different picture. The OECD Environmental Performance Review 2017 states: "In comparison with other OECD countries, Switzerland has among the highest shares of threatened species, including mammals." The OECD also found that Switzerland "relies heavily on the designation of hunting reserves" that "were originally intended to limit excessive hunting" and that the "quality of protected areas is inadequate."

The WWF confirms in 2025: In an international comparative study on combating the biodiversity crisis, Switzerland ranks last. This doesn't fit with a lobby that claims its 30’000 members are the driving force of nature conservation. Half of the formerly huntable animal species are not in good conservation status or have become extinct. Protected species such as the brown hare, black grouse, or woodcock remain on the list of huntable species.

Combating rather than promoting nature conservation

Particularly revealing is the behavior of the JagdSchweiz board in concrete nature conservation issues. Fabio Regazzi, Vice President of JagdSchweiz and Center Party Councillor of States, actively opposed the Adula National Park in 2016 – the largest nature conservation project in Switzerland in decades. The planned park around the Rheinwaldhorn in Graubünden and Ticino could have given biodiversity an enormous boost: 250 to 300 million francs in investments over ten years, around 200 jobs, and a sustainable perspective for emigrating mountain communities. Instead, the Ticino hunting association FCTI – whose long-time president was Regazzi – campaigned against it with fear propaganda. Voters in the affected communities rejected the park. In 2018, hobby hunters also prevented the creation of a second national park. It's not about protecting nature: it's about securing hunting grounds.

The same Regazzi advocated for wolf-free zones in the National Council, opposed the biodiversity initiative, and tried to make barbed hooks in fishing socially acceptable again – a violation of animal protection law. Ticino State Councillor Claudio Zali described the hunting lobby's behavior as embodying "arrogance, lack of legal awareness, and egoism."

Suppressing criticism instead of conducting dialogue

Anyone who publicly questions JagdSchweiz's narrative must expect legal consequences. David Clavadetscher filed charges on behalf of JagdSchweiz against the platform wildbeimwild.com – for fact-based reporting and analyses on recreational hunting. The goal was to make critical voices "disappear from view." The Criminal Court of the Canton of Ticino in Bellinzona gave this a clear rejection: Judge Siro Quadri determined that the critical statements on wildbeimwild.com are not lies and have no defamatory character. The judgment is final. A civil proceeding in Locarno was also dismissed – JagdSchweiz achieved none of its goals.

The court thus confirmed what observers have long criticized: JagdSchweiz cultivates intimidation instead of dialogue. Members threatened 'civil war' if fox hunting were to be discontinued. The association works with violent imagery, fear-mongering and hunters' tales to influence democratic processes and restrict press and freedom of expression.

Habitat promotion is nature conservation. But recreational hunting is not automatically nature conservation, just because it takes place in the forest. Anyone claiming nature conservation must be measured by nature conservation standards: improving habitats, reducing disturbances, promoting biodiversity, creating transparency and proving effectiveness. This is precisely where the myth begins to crumble.

Claim 3: '44,000 habitat management days – voluntary and unpaid services'

JagdSchweiz calculates: 44,000 'working days in the hunting ground', which at an hourly wage of 30 francs would represent a counter-value of 10.5 million francs. What is concealed: These so-called habitat management days primarily serve hunting ground maintenance for the next hunting season – setting up feeding stations, building hunting stands, maintaining hunting infrastructure. The 'voluntary work' is therefore largely self-serving: hobby hunters maintain the hunting ground in which they subsequently kill animals.

Real nature conservation work – such as biotope management, renaturalization, species protection projects – is primarily carried out in Switzerland by nature conservation organizations, cantons and civil society. The comparison with a hypothetical hourly wage obscures the fact that professional game wardens could perform these tasks more efficiently, more humanely and without self-interest in hunting – as Geneva has demonstrated for over 50 years.

Claim 4: 'Hunting is a targeted intervention in a known population'

The brochure claims that recreational hunting is preceded by 'a count and planning of the wildlife population'. Practice looks different. Even the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) communicates through Wildtier Schweiz that hunting statistics only allow limited conclusions about the condition of populations.

Scientific evidence also shows that intensive hunting causes the opposite of population control. Servanty et al. (2009) published in the 'Journal of Animal Ecology': Under high hunting pressure, fertility in wild boar is significantly higher than in lightly hunted areas. Sexual maturity occurs earlier, even young sows become pregnant. Recreational hunting thus generates precisely the population explosion it claims to prevent.

A study by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) from 2014 confirms: Wild boar populations cannot be reduced through hunting measures alone. Wild boar reproduction is compensatory – losses from recreational hunting are offset by more offspring.

Darimont et al. (2009, PNAS) showed in a meta-analysis: Human hobby hunters change wildlife populations faster than any other evolutionary factor ever observed in wildlife. Phenotypic change rates in hunted populations were up to 300 percent higher than under natural selection.

Claim 5: 'Wild game meat worth 20 million francs – more biological than organic meat'

The brochure praises wild game meat as high-quality and sustainable. The survey even suggests that wild game meat is 'more biological than organic meat'. What is concealed: The Federal Food Safety Office (FSVO) makes clear that wild boar, roe deer and red deer 'can be among the foods most highly contaminated with lead'. The cause is lead-containing hunting ammunition, which deforms upon impact and distributes in tiny fragments throughout the meat.

The FSVO recommends: Children up to seven years of age, pregnant women, nursing mothers and women planning pregnancy should 'avoid eating game meat as much as possible' that was hunted with lead ammunition. The German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) warns: In hunter households, where up to 90 portions of game meat are consumed per year, 'health risks must be expected, particularly for unborn children and children under seven years of age'.

Current research also shows: The average lead content in small game hunted with lead ammunition is about 5.2 ppm – that is around 14 times higher than assumed in EU risk assessments. Added to this are risks from zoonoses such as trichinosis and hepatitis E. The French health authority ANSES recommends limiting consumption of game meat to a maximum of three times per year.

Carrion instead of delicacy

What JagdSchweiz markets as a 'natural resource' is in practice often a hygiene risk. Just minutes after the shot, blood coagulation and bacterial multiplication begin in the animal's body. Within one hour, one million bacteria per gram of contaminated meat can form. In slaughterhouses, livestock is processed under strict hygiene regulations – these controls are largely absent in recreational hunting.

The reality in the field: hours of dawdling during retrieval, inadequate cooling, unhygienic field dressing in the open air, no official meat inspection. Added to this are residues that no butcher would accept: pesticides, manure contamination, heavy metals, PFAS – all unexamined. Wild animals that feed in intensively used agricultural landscapes are not automatically 'organic'. They absorb what lies in this landscape – and that is often anything but natural.

The risk doesn't end with lead. Raw or inadequately cooked game meat can transmit trichinellosis, salmonella, E. coli and the hepatitis E virus. Particularly at risk are immunocompromised individuals and pregnant women – in whom a hepatitis E infection can lead to liver inflammation, chronic progression or organ failure.

Game meat with lead contamination, zoonosis risk, lack of systematic food control and carrion character is certainly not 'more biological than organic'.

Claim 6: 'Hunting prevents the spread of animal diseases'

The survey in the brochure suggests that hobby hunters protect the population from animal diseases. Science says the opposite. More than 18 studies prove that fox hunting, for example, does not regulate populations and also does not protect against diseases. On the contrary: decimation can destroy social structures in populations and even intensify disease dynamics.

The Friedrich Loeffler Institute demands that in case of an outbreak of African swine fever in wild boar, driven hunts should be avoided. The destruction of stable family groups not only leads to an increase in birth rates, but also to increased migration of individual animals – and thus potentially to faster spread of diseases.

Whoever shoots foxes shoots into their own healthcare system

Foxes are not pests, but nature's health police. A single fox eats around 4,000 mice per year. Mice are reservoir hosts for tick-borne pathogens such as Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis as well as for hantavirus. A study by Tim R. Hofmeester (Wageningen University, 2017, Proceedings of the Royal Society B) examined 20 forest plots and reached a clear conclusion: In areas with higher fox and stone marten activity, rodents carried 10 to 20 percent fewer tick larvae. The nymphs were 15 percent more frequently infected with pathogens in areas with low predator activity.

The consequence is measurable: Fewer predators due to recreational hunting means more mice, more infected ticks and rising FSME and Lyme disease cases in humans. FSME numbers in Switzerland reached their highest level since 2013 in early 2025. In Germany, 686 cases were registered in 2024 — the second-highest FSME values ever recorded. Hantavirus, transmitted by mice through fecal dust, causes up to 2,000 cases per year — eight times more than fox tapeworm, which hobby hunters use to justify their fox hunting.

Fox hunting spreads fox tapeworm instead of combating it

JagdSchweiz has claimed for years that fox hunting protects against fox tapeworm. A French long-term study near Nancy impressively refutes this. Over four years, 776 additional foxes were killed across approximately 700 square kilometers — hunting pressure increased by 35 percent. The result: The fox population did not decline, as juvenile foxes immigrated from neighboring areas. The infection rate with fox tapeworm rose from 40 to 55 percent — because the immigrating young foxes carried contaminated feces into new territories. The study title speaks for itself: 'Echinococcus multilocularis management by fox culling: An inappropriate paradigm.'

Luxembourg shows the opposite: After banning fox hunting in 2015, the infection rate dropped from 40 percent to under 10 percent. Swiss rabies was not eradicated by recreational hunting, but by vaccine baits — Switzerland has been rabies-free since 1998. The Swiss Rabies Control Center already established: A hunting-based reduction of the fox population is impossible.

Ground hunting as disease driver

The ground hunting destroys stable family communities among foxes. This leads to every vixen being fertilized and producing more cubs per litter — the population increases instead of declining. Simultaneously, chronically high hunting pressure causes permanent stress, which suppresses the immune systems of wild animals and makes them more susceptible to infections. Recreational hunting thus creates sicker, more stressed populations with higher density — the opposite of what JagdSchweiz claims.

The cascade extends further: Fewer foxes means more mice and rats, and thus more leptospirosis (via rodent urine in puddles), more hantavirus, more botulism (because missing scavengers leave carcasses lying around) and more tick-borne diseases. Cantons with the highest fox kills — including Bern, Aargau, Graubünden and Zurich — have solved none of these problems. On the contrary: They are contributing to them.

Claim 7: 'Over 80% of the population confirms that recreational hunting takes place in accordance with animal welfare standards'

JagdSchweiz conducts a population survey every two years through the company DemoScope and presents the results as proof of broad acceptance of recreational hunting. What the brochure conceals: The survey is based on only 1,005 respondents. The client is JagdSchweiz itself — the organization that has a commercial interest in positive results. The questions are suggestively formulated: Who would spontaneously object to the question of whether hobby hunters 'work for the environment' if they know no counter-perspective?

JagdSchweiz itself admits that the results are 'somewhat declining compared to the last surveys'. The trend thus points downward — despite massive PR work.

Opinion research as PR instrument

The pattern is internationally recognizable: Jagd Österreich celebrates '85 percent approval' – yet the core question merely asks: 'Do you grant other people the right to hunt if they do so according to current hunting laws?' This measures liberal tolerance toward a legal activity – not substantive approval of recreational hunting. The trick works in three stages: First, 'tolerance' is surveyed, then reinterpreted as 'social acceptance' and finally presented as a 'public mandate'.

The same DemoScope institute delivers opposing results for different clients: For JagdSchweiz, the survey showed a 'large majority' for recreational hunting. For Schweizer Tierschutz STS the same institute found: 64 percent want to ban den hunting, only 21 percent want to keep it. 43 percent want to completely ban driven hunts, another 32 percent want to severely restrict them – together 75 percent. As soon as specific hunting practices are surveyed, the supposed approval collapses.

The representative WaMos-2 study from 2012 shows an even clearer picture: 79 percent of the Swiss population have reservations about recreational hunting or fundamentally reject it. JagdSchweiz's '80 percent approval' is thus not an expression of real support, but a product of targeted questioning and selective communication.

The facts behind the facade

More crucial than opinion polls are facts: According to Schweizer Tierschutz STS the success rate for tracking wounded game varies by canton from only 35 to 65 percent. This means: Around half of the animals wounded in recreational hunting can never be put out of their misery despite tracking efforts. In the canton of Graubünden, around 3,836 animals were only wounded instead of being killed in accordance with animal welfare standards over five years – plus regulatory fines of over 700,000 francs for unlawful shootings.

Under these circumstances, there can be no talk of 'animal welfare compliant'.

Claim 8: 'Wildlife damage is the result of intact biodiversity'

This sentence in the brochure is particularly revealing. JagdSchweiz claims wildlife damage is 'the consequence of a desired species-rich fauna' – and simultaneously the justification for recreational hunting. This is circular reasoning: First a problem is constructed, then one offers oneself as the solution.

Yet the figures in Geneva show: Wildlife damage is comparable to that in Schaffhausen – a canton where hunting is intensive. Before the hunting ban in 1974, recreational hunters in Geneva had exterminated wild boar for decades. Today around five wild boar live per square kilometer of forest – a low, stable level controlled by professional wildlife wardens.

The actual causes of wildlife damage – intensive agriculture, habitat destruction, feeding practices by recreational hunters and population pressure created by hunting – are systematically ignored in the brochure.

Claim 9: 'Hunting is a responsible activity for nature'

The last page of the brochure presents a 'hunting code' with behavioral recommendations: 'I avoid unnecessary suffering of animals.' 'I work to preserve biodiversity.' 'I hunt respectfully and responsibly.'

The reality: Since the beginning of BFU statistics in 2000, over 75 people were killed in hunting accidents by 2019. Mathematically, a hunting accident happens every 29 hours. Annually there are around 300 recognized accidents involving recreational hunting – plus a significant dark figure among retirees and accompanying persons who are not statistically recorded.

Scientific studies systematically document the impacts: Wildlife lives under constant stress in a 'Landscape of Fear'. Elevated cortisol levels were measured in wild boar during driven hunts (Güldenpfennig et al. 2021). Mountain hares hunted with dogs showed cortisol levels 6.5 times higher (Pedersen et al. 2024). Recreational hunting destroys family groups, forces unnatural behavioral changes, and triggers compensatory reproduction.

Criminality in the Environment of Recreational Hunting

The category 'Criminality and Hunting' on wildbeimwild.com has documented crimes, regulatory violations, and systemic misconduct in the recreational hunting environment for years. This includes poaching, illegal shooting of protected species, mistaken shooting of domestic and farm animals, weapons misuse, and threats against those with differing views. In October 2024, a Valais hobby hunter shot a livestock guardian dog that he claimed to have mistaken for a wolf – value: around 8,000 francs. At the end of November 2024, a 64-year-old hobby hunter in Canton Vaud was killed by a shot from a colleague.

The Swiss Animal Protection STS demands, among other things, a nationwide ban on den hunting, strict restrictions on driven hunting, mandatory reporting of tracking wounded animals, an end to lead ammunition, and the removal of species such as brown hare, mountain hare, black grouse, ptarmigan, and woodcock from the list of huntable species. None of these demands appear in the 'Hunting Code' of the brochure – and none have been supported by JagdSchweiz.

A hobby activity that regularly kills people and animals, hunts protected species, and evades all independent oversight is certainly not 'responsible'.

Claim 10: 'JagdSchweiz collaborates with WWF, Pro Natura and BirdLife'

The brochure lists numerous 'organizations with similar goals', including WWF, Pro Natura and BirdLife Switzerland. What is suggested: Recreational hunting is broadly supported and accepted by nature conservation organizations.

What actually happens: According to the brochure, institutional dialogue serves to 'prevent senseless hunting restrictions and excessive over-regulation'. The collaboration is therefore not a commitment to nature conservation, but a strategic lobbying instrument. It's not about jointly promoting biodiversity – it's about fending off restrictions on recreational hunting.

Dialogue Failed

Notable is who is missing from the brochure's partner list: The Swiss Animal Protection STS – the country's largest and oldest animal protection organization – has ceased all dialogue with JagdSchweiz. The STS demands a ban on den hunting, strict restrictions on driven hunting, an end to lead ammunition, and the removal of threatened species from the hunting list. JagdSchweiz opposes every single one of these demands.

The stakeholder process for revising the hunting law also failed: In October 2022, the Farmers' Union, the Alpine Agriculture Association, and the SAB withdrew from joint negotiations. The 'constructive cooperation' that JagdSchweiz praises in the brochure regularly breaks down against reality – because the hunting lobby views compromises as threats to their hobby and systematically torpedoes nature conservation demands.

The partner list in the brochure is not a coalition of like-minded organizations. It is an enumeration of organizations with whom JagdSchweiz occasionally sits in the same room and who hold fundamentally different positions on central issues.

Advertising Brochure Instead of Factual Basis

The JagdSchweiz brochure is not a scientific document, but a PR instrument. It systematically conceals the dark sides of recreational hunting: animal suffering from missed shots, health risks from lead ammunition, compensatory reproduction, hunting accidents, the catastrophic state of biodiversity in Switzerland, and the existence of functioning alternatives such as in Canton Geneva.

Anyone who wants to honestly answer the question 'Does recreational hunting protect and benefit?' must look beyond the glossy images and acknowledge the scientific evidence.