Fox hunting without facts: How JagdSchweiz invents problems

On 20 November 2025, JagdSchweiz published a position paper on fox hunting. The tenor is clear: fox hunting is “sensible and useful” and must “absolutely be retained”. Criticism from nature and animal welfare organisations is dismissed in it as emotional and lacking in facts.

But anyone who takes a look at the actual developments in fox-hunting-free regions, at court rulings and at the official figures on hunting practice quickly sees that the paper primarily defends a hunting self-image and a bloody pastime that is hardly compatible any longer with modern wildlife ecology and animal welfare. Luxembourg has refrained from any fox hunting since 2015, Geneva from any recreational hunting at all since 1974, and neither the one canton nor the other country has recorded the catastrophes that the recreational hunting lobby regularly paints on the wall. Reality refutes the position paper before one has even read a single page.

What awaits you here

JagdSchweiz is defending a system that has long been on the defensive: What the position paper says, what is missing from it, and why both are revealing.
Luxembourg: fox hunting banned, problems failed to materialise: What authorities, independent reports and parliamentary questions have documented since 2015, and how dramatically the opposite of the lobby's predictions has come to pass.
Canton of Geneva: fifty years of wildlife policy without recreational hunting: How the canton shows that nature does not collapse without recreational hunting, but flourishes, with the highest density of brown hares in Switzerland.
National parks and areas free of fox hunting: the threat scenario remains theoretical: What long-term observations from hunting-free zones in Europe show about fox density and biodiversity.
The culture of violence in recreational hunting before the courts: What the legally binding ruling of the Bellinzona Criminal Court says about JagdSchweiz, freedom of expression, and substantiated facts.
Grisons: official figures expose the idealised image: What the official high hunt statistics reveal about mis-kills, unlawful killings and wounded animals.
The fox as a scapegoat for failed developments in agriculture: Why the decline of ground-nesting birds and brown hares is not down to the fox, and which factors experts and authorities actually identify.
Disease: a success of medicine, not of the rifle: What the history of rabies control and the fox tapeworm data from Luxembourg reveal about the claimed disease prevention through fox hunting.
What a modern wildlife policy would truly require: Three concrete priorities as an alternative to recreational fox hunting.
Animal welfare law versus hunting logic: Why the utilisation rhetoric of the position paper contradicts the spirit of the Swiss Animal Welfare Act and Civil Code.
As of October 2026: Unanswered cantonal questions, the Zurich Wildlife Book, and dissent within the recreational hunting community.
Argumentation guide: Answers to the most common justifications put forward by the fox-hunting lobby.
Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers.

JagdSchweiz is defending a system that has long been on the back foot

In its position paper of November 2025, JagdSchweiz responds to the 'discussion repeatedly stirred up by nature and animal welfare circles' about the purpose and future of fox hunting. The organisation insists that recreational hunting of foxes is necessary to regulate populations, prevent damage, combat disease and protect other wild animal species. In doing so, the fox is indirectly built up into a problem figure that would run out of control without shot and rifle. How many foxes fall victim to this logic is shown by the Federal Hunting Statistics 2025: 19,208 foxes were shot; including all other losses, the figure is 20,938.

What stands out is what is missing: a sober scientific evaluation of the experience in regions where fox hunting has not taken place for years or even decades, and an honest reckoning with the massive failings of the hunting lobby's own clientele in hunting practice. In the position paper, foxes are treated as "ownerless public property" and as a raw material with a fluctuating fur price. What matters is hunting law, hunting bag and market — not the animal as a sentient individual. This is the worldview of an interest group that has already outlived itself without noticing.

More on this: Hunter lobby in Switzerland: how influence works and JagdSchweiz's blacklist

Luxembourg: fox hunting banned, problems failed to materialise

Luxembourg completely ended recreational hunting of foxes on 1 April 2015. Before the ban, around 3,000 foxes died each year at the hands of recreational hunters in the Grand Duchy. Hunting associations back then predicted a 'population explosion', a growing risk of disease and increasing damage to ground-nesting birds and livestock. None of this has come to pass.

Environment Minister Carole Dieschbourg repeatedly confirmed in response to parliamentary questions from the opposition: there are no indications of an increase in the fox population. Wildlife camera checks and counts point to a stable, unchanged population. The finding on the fox tapeworm is particularly significant: while in a French test area near Nancy the infection rate among foxes rose from 40 to 55 per cent as a result of intensified hunting (Comte et al. 2017), in Luxembourg it fell from 39.7 to 10.0 per cent after the hunting ban (Technical Report No. 8 of the Nature Administration, 2020). Fox hunting is therefore not only an unsuitable means of combating the fox tapeworm: it demonstrably promotes its spread. The Luxembourg hunting association FSHCL even took legal action against the ban. It failed.

More on this: Luxembourg Extends Fox Hunting Ban and Recreational hunters spread diseases

Canton of Geneva: Fifty years of wildlife policy without recreational hunting

The reality check is even clearer in Switzerland itself. In the canton of Geneva, recreational hunting was abolished by popular vote in 1974. Before the vote, the recreational hunting lobby had claimed that without hunting, the brown hare would be threatened with extinction by predators in the canton. The opposite has happened: Geneva today has the highest brown hare density in the whole of Switzerland.

At the beginning of the 1970s, large wild animals in the canton of Geneva had been almost wiped out by excessive recreational hunting: only a few dozen roe deer remained, while red deer and wild boars had been absent for decades. After the hunting ban, populations recovered. Geneva is today one of the last bastions for wild rabbits and grey partridges on Swiss soil and is home to the last grey partridge population in Switzerland. On the shores of Lake Geneva and the Rhône, the number of overwintering waterbirds rose spectacularly, a direct consequence of the absence of disturbance from recreational hunting. Fifty years of nature observation in the canton of Geneva provide the most convincing argument against the recreational hunting lobby's doomsday scenarios about wildlife populations.

More on this: The game warden model: professional wildlife management with a code of honour and Geneva: hunting ban since 1974

National parks and fox-hunting-free areas: the doomsday scenario remains theoretical

Besides Luxembourg and Geneva, there are other areas across Europe where foxes have been hunted little or not at all for years, including national parks such as the Bavarian Forest and Berchtesgaden, as well as larger hunting-free grounds. The findings are consistent:

There are no documented «fox explosions» followed by collapses of ground-nesting bird or hare populations.
Fox density adapts to natural and human-made conditions, above all to food availability.
Where humans do not intervene with the shotgun, food availability, disease and intraspecific competition regulate populations themselves.

This leaves JagdSchweiz facing an obvious contradiction: while the position paper paints dramatic scenarios, real-world field trials deliver the opposite on two levels, nationally in the canton of Geneva and internationally in Luxembourg. Zones free of fox hunting are not ecological problem areas. They are often biodiversity hotspots.

The culture of violence in recreational hunting on trial

How the hunting milieu surrounding JagdSchweiz operates is illustrated by proceedings before the criminal court in Bellinzona. JagdSchweiz had filed a criminal complaint against the IG Wild beim Wild because the association felt its honour had been violated by sharp criticism. At the centre of the case were formulations describing JagdSchweiz as a "militant problem association", accused of a culture of violence, disrespect towards wild animals and massive political pressure exerted through intimidation and lying propaganda.

After taking evidence, Judge Siro Quadri concluded that these statements are not lies and therefore have no defamatory character. The IG Wild beim Wild was in 2020 acquitted, and the ruling is final. Legally, this means that even drastic wording about a “militant hunting milieu” and a “culture of violence” was deemed by the criminal court to be covered by freedom of expression and, at its core, supported by the facts and connections presented. This casts a clear light on the environment in which the current position paper came about.

More on this: Hunting and Animal Welfare: What the Practice Does to Wild Animals and Psychology of recreational hunting

Grisons: Official figures expose the idealised image

JagdSchweiz likes to present the high hunts in Grisons as a prime example of responsible management. The official figures tell a different story. During the high hunt, around 10,000 red deer, chamois, roe deer and wild boars are killed in the canton every year. Around 9 per cent of these kills are unlawful. In the five years before 2016 alone, recreational hunters paid fixed penalty fines of over 700,000 francs, up to 177,000 francs per year. From 2012 to 2020, the Office for Hunting and Fisheries recorded over 1,000 fines and complaints against recreational hunters every year; since 2021, these figures have no longer been published.

The figures on wounded animals are particularly serious: between 2012 and 2016, 56,403 red deer, roe deer, chamois and wild boars were killed in Grisons. In 3,836 cases, animals were merely wounded and either succumbed to their injuries or could not be found. During the 2022 high hunt, the Office for Hunting and Fisheries reported 790 mistaken kills out of around 9,200 animals killed. Wildlife biologist Lukas Walser confirmed to SRF: “This proportion is roughly the same every year.” Extrapolated to all hunting cantons and over longer periods, this amounts to tens of thousands of animals that are either killed illegally or not killed in line with animal welfare standards. The image of the disciplined, law-abiding recreational hunter that JagdSchweiz paints for the public is an advertising brochure, not a realistic description.

More on this: High Hunt in Switzerland: Traditional Ritual, Zone of Violence and Stress Test for Wild Animals and High hunt in Grisons: control and consequences

Fox as scapegoat for agricultural failures

A central motif of hunting rhetoric claims that foxes decimate ground-nesting birds and brown hares in the cultivated landscape to such an extent that only intensive recreational hunting of predators can protect these species. Developments in Luxembourg, Geneva and the national parks free of fox hunting show otherwise.

The main problem lies not with the fox but in the fields. Specialist articles and official reports consistently point to:

habitat destruction through land consolidation, drainage and the loss of hedgerows and fallow land
the massive use of pesticides and fertilisers, which destroys insects and thus the food base
early and frequent mowing with heavy machinery, which directly kills clutches and young animals

Luxembourg's environmental policy explicitly attributes the decline of various field bird species to these factors, not to foxes. Where meadows are mown later and more gently, pesticides are reduced and refuge areas are created, populations recover – entirely without fox hunting. Turning foxes into scapegoats for the consequences of misguided agricultural policy may be politically convenient. From a factual standpoint, it is a diversionary tactic.

More on this: Hunting and biodiversity: does recreational hunting really protect nature? and Hunting myths: 12 claims you should scrutinise critically

Disease: a triumph of medicine, not of the rifle

Another standard argument of the hunting associations is disease control. The fox serves as a scapegoat for rabies, fox tapeworm and other zoonoses. However, the history of rabies control in Europe clearly shows that the breakthrough came through widespread vaccine bait programmes, not through recreational hunting. In Switzerland and its neighbouring countries, millions of vaccine baits were distributed, after which fox rabies disappeared within a few years.

With fox tapeworm, too, what matters is hygiene, public information and, where appropriate, targeted baiting with deworming agents in hotspots. The Luxembourg data even prove the opposite of the recreational hunting lobby's claim: the proportion of infected foxes fell from 39.7 to 10.0 per cent after the hunting ban, while in the intensively hunted test area near Nancy it rose from 40 to 55 per cent. In Switzerland, according to an analysis published in 2025 in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, an average of around 70 people per year fall ill on fox tapeworm. A decline due to fox hunting has not been documented anywhere. Disease prevention is therefore no blank cheque for a general, permanent persecution of the fox. On closer inspection, it is an argument that turns against fox hunting.

More on this: Small game hunting and wildlife diseases and Recreational hunting promotes disease

What a modern wildlife policy would really need

Instead of clinging to poorly justified fox hunting, Switzerland could take its cue from models that are already working. A contemporary wildlife management approach would focus on three priorities:

Waste and feeding policy in settlements: Secure waste systems, clear feeding bans and awareness campaigns would effectively limit fox densities in cities in a manner consistent with animal welfare. Foxes follow the food supply, not the moralising rhetoric of hunting associations.

Habitat instead of lead for endangered species: Mowing meadows later, reducing pesticides, promoting small-scale structures, creating resting zones: these measures demonstrably help ground-nesting birds and brown hares far more than a blanket hunt on predators. Geneva, which has the highest density of brown hares in Switzerland, has documented this.

Targeted, professional intervention instead of recreational hunting: Where documented, serious damage actually occurs, state game wardens can intervene selectively with clear mandates and scientific monitoring. The Geneva model has shown for fifty years that this works. Long-term observations show that biodiversity in the canton has increased significantly since recreational hunting was abolished in 1974.

Animal welfare law versus hunting logic

Swiss animal welfare legislation makes clear that its purpose is to protect the dignity and wellbeing of animals. The Civil Code states explicitly that animals are not things. An argument that justifies fox hunting primarily on the grounds of economic appeal and utilisation effectively reduces the fox once again to a commodity and contradicts the spirit of Swiss animal welfare law.

In the position paper by JagdSchweiz, there is not a single word about the fox's capacity to suffer, about misfires and their consequences, about animal welfare during night hunts with shotguns, or about the stress effect of hunting on family groups. What one does find is fur prices, hunting law, hunting bags, and an interest in sustaining a hobby. Whoever writes about wild animals in this way is not writing about living beings, but about resources. This is not modern wildlife management. It is a relic from an era in which the rifle was regarded as an all-purpose tool against problems of our own making.

More on this: Why animal welfare law ends at the forest edge and Introduction to hunting criticism

As of October 2026

Since February 2026, the gap between claim and evidence has not grown any smaller. In open letters, IG Wild beim Wild asked the governments of Glarus, Uri, Appenzell Outer Rhodes and Solothurn a total of 30 questions about the purpose and data basis of fox hunting, following their responses to Pascal Wolf's fox petition. By 4 October 2026, no answer. Solothurn had cited the position paper of JagdSchweiz as its only source. Requests for access to the files under freedom-of-information law are now pending; the deadline ends on 4 November 2026. The canton of Zug took a different path and, in 2025/26, became the first canton to have fox hunting independently assessed: the expert report by SWILD (Kistler & Bontadina 2026) concludes that it does not regulate populations sustainably and does not improve disease control. The Zug hunting commission thereupon decided to no longer actively promote.

In the canton of Zurich, the electronic game register, in which recreational hunters record their own kills, shows a similar picture. According to data from the Fisheries and Hunting Administration, which Wild beim Wild analysed, of the 21,846 foxes shot between 2015 and 2025, only 7.7 percent carry a note of illness or injury. Conflicts with agriculture and the population are not recorded at all. What this division into « killable » and « worthy of protection » means in terms of the history of ideas is shown in the article Pest or beneficial species: the ideology behind fox hunting.

Opposition is now also coming from within the recreational hunting community itself. The position papers of the Ecological Hunting Association of Switzerland cite intensive agriculture as the main cause for the decline of the brown hare, and loss of suitable habitat for the ptarmigan, black grouse and woodcock — not the fox. Its policy guidelines call for a ban on earth hunting. JagdSchweiz itself admits in its own fox position paper that hunting «probably has hardly any noticeably limiting influence» on the population, yet still demands intensive regional hunting. This and further contradictions from 28 position papers are documented in the overview JagdSchweiz argues against itself.

What needs to change

Immediate protected status for the fox in Switzerland: Recreational fox hunting will be banned under federal law. Targeted, documented interventions by professional game wardens remain possible where demonstrably serious damage pressure exists. Luxembourg and Geneva have shown for years that this solution works. Template motion: Ban on pointless fox hunting
Ban on earth hunting and other cruel methods against foxes: Earth hunting, in which dogs are sent into fox dens, is one of the cruellest hunting methods and must be banned under federal law. The same applies to live traps without daily checks and to lure hunting in winter. Template motion: Ban on cruel trap hunting and lure hunting
Independent scientific population surveys instead of kill tallies as a data basis: Swiss fox policy has so far relied on kill figures as a population indicator. This is methodologically inadequate. Standardised, independent population surveys modelled on the Luxembourg approach (wildlife cameras, transect counts, scat analyses) are needed.
Agricultural policy measures instead of predator persecution: Ground-nesting birds and brown hares are not protected by fox hunting, but by later mowing, pesticide reduction, hedgerow promotion and quiet zones. These measures must be enshrined in law and funded, rather than replaced by symbolic predator control.
Transparency obligation for JagdSchweiz position papers: Position papers from hunting associations that influence political decisions must disclose their data basis and withstand independent scrutiny. Where official data and scientific studies contradict the claims made, this must be documented publicly. Template motion: Transparent hunting statistics

Talking points

«Without fox hunting, populations will explode.» Luxembourg has been showing the opposite since 2015, as has Geneva since 1974: stable populations, no explosions, no ecological collapses. Wildlife camera monitoring and counts in both cases confirm steady or declining fox densities. The population explosion thesis is a disproven prediction.

“Foxes decimate ground-nesting birds and brown hares.” Without fox hunting, the canton of Geneva has the highest brown hare density in Switzerland and the country's last remaining grey partridge population. This exposes the argument for what it is: a distraction from the actual causes (pesticides, land consumption, early mowing).

“Fox hunting combats fox tapeworm and rabies.” As for fox tapeworm, the data from France and Luxembourg show the opposite is true. More intensive hunting near Nancy raised the infection rate from 40 to 55 per cent, while the hunting ban in Luxembourg lowered it from 39.7 to 10.0 per cent. Rabies was defeated in Europe by vaccine baits, not by buckshot. Disease prevention is not a valid argument for fox hunting. It is a refuted one.

“Fox hunting is necessary wildlife management.” The Geneva model, with state game wardens and targeted, documented interventions, has been functioning for fifty years, is scientifically monitored, and is demonstrably better ecologically than blanket recreational hunting. Management is possible without recreational hunting.

“JagdSchweiz acts in the interest of nature.” In 2020, the criminal court of Bellinzona established in a legally binding ruling that criticism of a "culture of violence" in the circles around JagdSchweiz does not constitute criminal defamation, but is a permissible value judgement supported by the facts presented. Those who act in the name of nature must be measured against facts, not against their own self-image.

Quick links

Articles on Wild beim Wild:

Related dossiers:

Our Standard

JagdSchweiz has published a position paper relying on scenarios that have long since been disproven in Luxembourg and Geneva. This dossier counters that with verifiable facts: official data, court rulings, official hunting statistics, and long-term observations from areas free of fox hunting. The fox does not need a recreational hunter. It needs a society that stops making it the scapegoat for misguided agricultural policy and an obsolete model of hunting.

IG Wild beim Wild documents the discrepancy between recreational hunting lobby rhetoric and reality, with sources that anyone can verify for themselves. This dossier is updated whenever new Luxembourg reports, Swiss court rulings or political developments make it necessary.

More on the topic of recreational hunting: in our Dossier "Hunting in Switzerland: Figures, Systems and Myths" we bring together fact checks, analyses and background reports.