Hunting in Switzerland: figures, systems and myths

Around 29,000 recreational hunters are active in Switzerland. In 2025 they killed some 74,700 roe deer, red deer, wild boars and chamois, as well as over 22,000 foxes and badgers (Swiss Hunting Statistics 2025). Recreational hunting is marketed as nature conservation: as a selfless service to wild animals and the landscape, as an indispensable regulatory tool, as a bridge between humans and nature.

A closer look reveals something quite different. Around 65 percent of hunters in Switzerland practise their activity in cantons with licence hunting, meaning cantons where there is no permanent hunting ground, no clearly assigned area, and no institutionally anchored responsibility for habitats or wild animals. They pay for a time-limited right to shoot wild animals within a large area. Afterwards, this right expires. Anyone who buys the same licence the following year bears just as little responsibility for the same habitat as they did the year before.

This structural problem lies at the heart of the hunting narrative in Switzerland: the majority of hunters have no institutional basis for the responsibility they publicly claim. Behavioural biology studies show that wild animals respond to hunting pressure with chronic stress, retreat and increased reproduction rates, not gratitude. Population ecologists have demonstrated that kills do not produce stable population regulation but instead trigger compensatory dynamics. And the canton of Geneva has shown since 1974 that wildlife diversity, biodiversity and social acceptance do not decline without recreational hunting, but actually grow.

This dossier systematically questions the hunting narrative. The focus is not on moral judgements but on verifiable facts: figures, responsibilities, accountability and impact. In addition, our cantonal analyses offer a deeper classification: Bern, Grisons, Zurich and Geneva etc.

What awaits you here

Two systems, one justification: licence hunting and territorial hunting compared.
Forced labour or usage right: what recreational hunters actually get.
Why wild animals don't like recreational hunters: the evidence from behavioural biology.
Killing as regulation: why the argument doesn't hold up biologically.
The 2025 hunting statistics: what the federal figures show.
Geneva: success without recreational hunting since 1974.
The game warden model: what professional structures mean.
What would need to change: Concrete political demands.
Argumentation guide: Answers to the most common objections on this topic.
Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers.

Two systems, one legitimacy: licence hunting and territorial hunting compared

Switzerland has two fundamentally different hunting systems, and the distinction between them is central to assessing the hunting narrative. In territorial hunting cantons (including Zurich, Aargau, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, Solothurn, Thurgau, Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft), hunting rights are tied to specific, geographically defined hunting grounds. Those who hunt lease a particular area for several years and are formally responsible for that habitat. This systemic link between area, responsibility and temporal continuity at least creates the formal possibility of lasting responsibility.

In licence hunting cantons (including Bern, Valais, Grisons, Vaud, Fribourg, Glarus, Jura, Neuchatel, both Appenzell cantons, Nidwalden, Obwalden, Schwyz, Ticino, Uri and Zug), the system works fundamentally differently: the licence permits hunting across the entire cantonal territory (except in federal and cantonal protected areas), for a limited period, without any permanently assigned habitat. Those who purchase a licence gain access to a large area without being permanently responsible for any part of it. Once the season ends, the right lapses. No institutionally anchored habitat responsibility arises as a result.

The distribution is statistically clear: around 65 per cent of those who hunt in Switzerland are active in licence hunting cantons, that is, within a system without lasting responsibility for a hunting ground. What matters is not that territorial hunting automatically equates to nature conservation. What matters is that responsibility is structurally impossible within licence hunting. The public legitimisation of recreational hunting as a "service to nature" invokes a responsibility that the system simply does not provide for the majority of its practitioners.

More on this: FOEN: Hunting and hunting systems and Hunting myths: 12 claims you should scrutinise critically

Forced labour or usage right: what recreational hunters actually get

The term "forced labour" ("Frondienst") regularly crops up in the hunting policy debate. Recreational hunters like to portray their activity as a selfless service to the community, as an unpaid contribution to nature and society. A lexical and systemic analysis shows that the term is historically misapplied in the context of recreational hunting and obscures real structures of power, usage and incentives.

Historically, "Frondienst" (statute labour) referred to unpaid, compulsory work performed for the community or the state, without any individual return. The core of the term is selflessness. In Switzerland's hunting system, by contrast, there is a clear and exclusive return: recreational hunters pay for licences or hunting grounds and receive an exclusive right in exchange: access to wild animals, including the right to kill them. This right is the central incentive of the system. Without the right to shoot, there would be neither hunting licences nor hunting leases. This removes the decisive criterion for statute labour: hunting is not an unpaid service but a contractually regulated right of use. Those who pay expect something in return, and that something is clearly defined.

This contradiction becomes particularly evident in cantons with licence hunting: there is no permanent attachment to a hunting ground, no long-term responsibility for an area, and no institutionally anchored habitat work. What remains is a time-limited right of use. The kill is not a side effect but the core of the activity. Nature conservation, by contrast, is measurable: it shows up in managed areas, concrete measures, defined timeframes and verifiable outcomes. Organisations engaged in landscape maintenance, protective forest management or biodiversity promotion work without weapons, without trophy logic and without kill quotas. In the context of hunting, the reference to "statute labour" primarily serves to morally elevate a right of use, rather than to describe it factually.

More on this: Initiative calls for «Game wardens instead of hunters» and The psychology of hunting

Why wild animals do not like recreational hunters: behavioural-biological evidence

The claim that wild animals benefit from recreational hunting, or at least accept it, does not hold up to behavioural-biological scrutiny. In the presence of recreational hunters, wild animals switch to a more vigilant behavioural mode. Research on elk in Canada and on ungulates in Europe has consistently shown this. “Humans are perceived as a danger,” explains Prof. Ilse Storch, head of the Chair of Wildlife Ecology and Management at the University of Freiburg. This is not habituation, nor acceptance. It is a biologically grounded stress response to a lethal threat.

Under hunting pressure, wild animals profoundly adapt their use of space. Roe deer and red deer abandon open areas and increasingly live under the cover of the forest. Their periods of activity shift into the quieter hours of the night, as a meta-analysis of 76 studies demonstrates (Gaynor et al. 2018, Science). These displacement effects lead to poorer feeding conditions, greater concentration on a smaller area and therefore more browsing damage to forest trees, not less. What the hunting lobby describes as 'forest protection' thus in part produces precisely the browsing pressure it claims to combat: because drive hunts and driven hunts chase wild animals in panic into those places of retreat, where they then feed on the available vegetation under heightened stress.

Scientific stress measurements confirm what behavioural studies suggest. In wild boars during drive hunts, Güldenpfennig et al. (2021, Scientific Reports) measured elevated cortisol levels in all samples, and in red deer, according to Santos et al. (2018), hunting management factors were the main drivers of stress hormone levels. From a biological perspective, hunting is therefore not a neutral activity but a permanent stressor with measurable physiological consequences. A central argument of recreational hunters, that wild animals get used to hunting, is clearly contradicted by this: wild animals can habituate to harmless disturbances, but not to lethal threats that create selective survival pressure.

More on this: Studies on the impact of hunting on wild animals and Wild animals, mortal fear and lack of stunning

Culling as regulation: why the argument does not hold up biologically

One of the central justifying arguments of recreational hunting is that kills are necessary to regulate wildlife populations. This argument sounds intuitively plausible, yet it does not withstand population-ecological analysis. The zoologist and ecologist Prof. Dr Josef H. Reichholf, former head of the Vertebrates Department at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology in Munich, puts it precisely: «Hunting does not regulate. It creates inflated and suppressed populations.»

The explanation lies in compensatory population dynamics. Wildlife populations do not respond passively to losses but with biological countermechanisms: higher reproduction rates, earlier sexual maturity, larger litters. In wild boars, it is documented that under heavy hunting pressure they invest earlier and more heavily in reproduction (Servanty et al. 2011, Journal of Applied Ecology; Hunting Fact Check), while in foxes, immigration offsets high kill numbers (Self-regulation of wildlife populations). As wildbeimwild.com aptly puts it: “Recreational hunting in its current form is not an effective instrument for population regulation, but a periodic wildlife harvest that often even stabilises or enlarges the population, with the side effect that recreational hunters never run out of game.”

Added to this is the selection problem: in practice, it is not random individuals that are removed, but specific age or sex classes, preferentially the most experienced, visible and strongest animals. Killing lead animals and dominant individuals destabilises social structures among deer species, wild boars and foxes. The result is disorganised groups, increased wandering movements and often rising rather than falling damage. From a biological perspective, killing often has a destabilising rather than regulating effect. And regulation requires clear ecological target values, which are often missing in Swiss hunting practice or are defined politically rather than biologically. Terms such as «sustainable population» or «a adapted game density» remain vague and often serve to retroactively legitimise kill quotas that have already been set.

More on this: Why recreational hunting fails as population control and Hunting myths: 12 claims you should scrutinise critically

74,700 ungulates: what the 2025 hunting statistics really show

In 2025, the 29,328 hunters in Switzerland killed 42,530 roe deer, 13,636 red deer, 9,280 wild boars and 9,228 chamois in the “kill” category, as well as 19,208 foxes and 3,166 badgers; in total, the federal statistics report 133,508 wild animals killed (Swiss Hunting Statistics 2025, previous year: Swiss Hunting Statistics 2024). The number of hunters is falling slowly (2000: 33,593), while kill numbers remain high. This is relevant information: stability is not a sign of conservation impact, but of a practice of use that secures its own continuation.

In the canton of Bern, one of the largest licence hunting cantons, the current kill figure of 4,789 roe deer in the 2024/2025 season corresponds to the lowest value since records began. The number of basic licences issued is likewise at an all-time low: 2,124 licences. This shows that fewer recreational hunters are active, not that pressure on wildlife populations has eased. In the canton of St. Gallen, a territorial hunting canton, almost 5,000 roe deer, red deer, chamois and wild boars were killed in 2024; the hunting authority attributes this to "the great commitment of the hunters". The wording is revealing: kills described as commitment, animals as a target to be achieved, not a word about habitat work or conservation impact.

What the hunting statistics really show, then, is the scale of the intervention: around 74,700 ungulates in a single year, over 22,000 foxes and badgers, thousands of individual animals per canton. This is no marginal phenomenon and no «necessary intervention» that disappears within the bounds of nature. It is a large-scale, annually repeated removal from wild animal populations, based on politically set quotas rather than on ecological target values that are scientifically grounded and publicly monitored. What appears in no hunting statistic: how many animals were wounded rather than killed instantly, how many follow-up searches ended without success, and how many animals died on roads in the wake of driven hunts.

More on this: Swiss Hunting Statistics 2025: What the Federal Figures Show and Switzerland: statistics on fatal hunting accidents

Geneva: Success without recreational hunting

In 1974, the canton of Geneva decided by popular vote to abolish militia hunting of mammals and birds. Since then, the right to shoot wild animals has rested with the state: kills are carried out by cantonally employed game wardens as part of a wildlife management programme overseen by the authorities. The hunting ban prevents a few hundred of Geneva's 500,000 residents from pursuing their hobby within their own canton. The benefits for the great majority have been documented for over 50 years.

The long-serving Geneva fauna inspector Gottlieb Dandliker (2001 to 2025) described the effect on wildlife: the bird population, which originally numbered only a few hundred individuals in Geneva, has grown to 30,000 winter visitors. Across the whole canton, a network of varied habitats has emerged in which a wide range of animals and plants, some of them rare, have found a home. A long-term study documents a marked increase in biodiversity. Wild animals use Geneva as a refuge from the surrounding hunting areas. For the public, this means more frequent, less stressful encounters with nature and greater social acceptance of wild animals in settled areas.

The Geneva model disproves the claim that an armed militia is a prerequisite for regulation or safety. Interventions are targeted, traceable and free of trophy or lease logic. They are tied to clear criteria such as damage prevention, road safety and animal welfare, and are carried out by state-employed professional staff using night vision and thermal imaging technology, which minimises stray shots and accidents. Geneva is not a theoretical alternative model. It has been lived practice for 50 years and is thus the strongest empirical argument that exists in the Swiss hunting debate.

More on this: Hunting in the Canton of Geneva: hunting ban, psychology and the perception of violence and Geneva and the hunting ban

The game warden model: what professional structures mean

The game warden model, following the Geneva example, consistently separates wildlife population regulation from the recreational sphere. Game wardens are employed by the state, professionally trained, and accountable to the community. Their interventions are bound to traceable criteria (damage prevention, road safety, animal welfare, biodiversity goals) and are documented transparently. This is the opposite of a system in which kill numbers are financed through the sale of hunting licences and hunting leases, and are thus structurally dependent on economic incentives.

A concrete proposal for a systemic change (from cantonal parliaments up to the federal level) can be found in the template text for hunting-critical motions worked out in detail. Central to this: the costs of wildlife management and damage prevention must be transparently disclosed and compared with the current situation (recreational hunting plus wildlife damage compensation plus hunting accident insurance costs). Anyone who takes this seriously will find that professional structures need not be more expensive than the fragmented, poorly controllable militia-hunting system.

What a systemic change does not mean: complete laissez-faire towards wild animals. Even with game warden structures, there are targeted interventions where they are ecologically and socially justified. What it does mean: that these interventions are carried out by specialist staff who have no trophy interests, no lease investments to justify, and no hunting-cultural expectations to fulfil. This is not a radical break, but the logical consequence of a wildlife policy that wants to live up to its own standards (nature conservation, animal welfare, societal responsibility).

More on this: Initiative calls for «Game wardens instead of hunters» and template texts for hunting-critical motions in cantonal parliaments

What needs to change

First: abolishing the structural irresponsibility within the licence hunting system. Anyone who is granted the right to kill wild animals in a large area must also bear permanent responsibility for that area. This means either converting licence hunting into a territorial system with clear responsibility for area and time, or gradually replacing it with professional game warden structures based on the Geneva model.
Second: cantonal pilot projects based on the Geneva model. Cantons that want to examine the game warden model seriously need room for manoeuvre under federal law and financial support for an evaluation phase. The Geneva model is over 50 years old; whether it can be transferred to other cantons is not a hypothetical question but a political decision that can be planned.
Third: transparent, ecologically justified kill quotas. Quotas must be based on scientifically validated population surveys, linked to clear ecological target values, publicly documented, and subject to independent oversight. Politically negotiated kill figures without a biological basis are not regulation.
Fourth: a complete cost accounting of recreational hunting. A transparent breakdown of all direct and indirect costs of the recreational hunting system (wildlife damage compensation, hunting accident insurance costs, costs arising from hunting-pressure-induced wildlife accidents, state supervisory costs) and its comparison with the costs of a game warden model. Without this calculation, the political debate about the “value” of recreational hunting to the community cannot be conducted seriously.
Fifth: decoupling of nature conservation and hunting entitlement. Nature conservation work (habitat maintenance, amphibian protection, breeding site care, wildlife monitoring) should be organised as an independent, recognised and funded service. Anyone who wants to protect nature does not need a hunting entitlement. Anyone who wants to hunt may not automatically legitimise themselves as a conservationist.
Sixth: a federal legal framework for professional wildlife management. The federal hunting act must recognise professional wildlife management without militia hunting as an equivalent alternative and provide cantons that take this path with the appropriate legal framework. What has worked in Geneva for over 50 years must no longer be treated as an exception under federal law.

Talking points

“Recreational hunters perform an indispensable nature conservation service of civic duty.” Historically, a service of civic duty means unpaid compulsory work without individual compensation. Recreational hunters acquire an exclusive, paid right to kill wild animals. That is a usage right, not a civic duty service. The term serves to morally elevate a leisure activity, not to describe it accurately.

“Without recreational hunting, wildlife populations would explode.” Population ecology shows the opposite: intensive hunting triggers compensatory increases in reproduction. Reichholf: “Hunting does not regulate. It creates inflated and suppressed populations.” Geneva has had no militia hunting since 1974 and no exploding populations. Wildlife populations regulate themselves through food availability, habitat capacity, climatic conditions and social structures, not through kill quotas.

“Recreational licence hunters know their habitat well and bear responsibility.” A time-limited licence without geographical commitment creates no institutional responsibility. Someone who hunts in Valais this season and does not obtain a licence the following year bears no legally or factually enforceable responsibility for the habitat. Good will and informal knowledge are no substitute for structural accountability.

“The Geneva model cannot be transferred, Geneva is too small and too urban.” Geneva is the smallest canton in Switzerland by area, borders France, and has a high population density. If the game warden model has been working precisely there for 50 years (with rising biodiversity, stable wildlife populations, and social acceptance), then "not transferable" is not a substantive argument, but a political protective claim.

«Anyone who wants to protect nature has to be on the ground, and recreational hunters are.» Presence on the ground is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for nature conservation. It only becomes nature conservation when it is tied to clear objectives, verifiable measures, and accountability. This is structurally absent in militia-based hunting, particularly in licence hunting. Professional game wardens are equally «on the ground», but with higher professional competence, clear responsibility, and no interest in making kills.

«Recreational hunting finances itself, a game warden model would burden the taxpayer.» This calculation ignores all the external costs of the recreational hunting system: compensation for wildlife damage, hunting accident insurance payouts, state control costs, and costs arising from browsing damage pressure caused by hunting-pressure-induced concentration of wild animals. An honest overall accounting is still outstanding, and the hunting lobby has no interest in it being carried out.

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Our Standard

Hunting in Switzerland is not a nature conservation system. It is a historically grown system of use that operates with rhetoric of responsibility where institutional accountability is structurally lacking, especially in licence hunting, which covers 65 percent of all hunting practitioners. Behavioural biology research shows that wild animals suffer under hunting pressure. Population ecology shows that kills do not produce stable regulation, but instead trigger compensatory dynamics. The canton of Geneva has shown since 1974 that wildlife diversity, social acceptance, and professional regulation do not decrease without militia-based hunting, but rather increase.

The consequence is logical: a society that wants nature conservation must organise it institutionally. That means professional responsibilities, clear objectives, transparent oversight and scientific evaluation. A shift towards wildlife warden structures is not radical, but an adaptation to the current state of science and ethics, and a matter of fairness towards those who do not want animals killed and yet are made to bear the burden, alongside the general public, of an armed leisure lobby. This dossier is updated continuously whenever new figures, studies or political developments require it.

More on the topic of recreational hunting: in our hunting dossier we bring together fact checks, analyses and background reports.