Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland: Systematic impunity and the limits of self-control

Officially, poaching in Switzerland is regarded as a marginal problem. Cantonal hunting inspectorates speak of “a few isolated cases”, hunting associations stress that their members abide by the law, and national statistics simply do not exist. This dossier shows why that picture does not stand up to reality: scientific studies, court proceedings and investigative research document a structural problem that goes far beyond classic poaching and calls the credibility of the entire recreational hunting system into question.

The dossier draws on data from the KORA foundation, court rulings, cantonal hunting statistics, research by Pro Natura and media reports. It documents forms of hunting crime, sheds light on structural weaknesses in monitoring and law enforcement, and shows why predators such as the lynx and the wolf are particularly affected. Those wishing to delve deeper will find the basis for the broader argument in the Introduction to hunting criticism.

What awaits you here

• How big is the problem? Why there are no national statistics and what the few available figures reveal.
• Forms of hunting crime: From snare traps and illegal kills to the poisoning of protected species.
• Who monitors recreational hunters? Why hunting oversight and wildlife wardens are structurally overstretched or biased.
• Law enforcement: Why proceedings are dropped and what penalties are at stake.
• Cantons in focus: Valais, Schwyz and the Grisons as hotspots.
• Predators as the main victims: Why lynx, wolves and birds of prey are systematically persecuted.
• The Geneva model as a counter-example: Professional wildlife wardens instead of self-regulation.
• What would need to change: Concrete political demands.
• Argumentation guide: Answers to the most common counterarguments.

How big is the problem?

Switzerland keeps no national statistics on poaching. This is not a technical gap but a structural failure. While Germany records cases of hunting-related poaching in its annual crime statistics (2020: 1,080 cases), neither the federal government nor the cantons in Switzerland carry out any systematic data collection. As research by Tierwelt and SRF shows, the cantonal hunting inspectorates simply have no figures. Or they do not want to release any.

The few available data points nevertheless paint a picture: the Grisons hunting inspector estimated 10 to 20 cases a year in the canton of Grisons alone. The Valais hunting service registers 5 to 10 cases annually. The Aargau public prosecutor reported a total of 31 convictions for offences and 41 for minor infringements under the hunting act for the period 2005 to 2015. The canton of Bern listed a total of 42 offences against the hunting act for 2021. Zurich cantonal police recorded eleven offences between 2010 and 2016, with a perpetrator identified in only a single case. The Ticino hunting report 2024 lists 190 self-reports by recreational hunters, 82 disciplinary fines and 186 infringement proceedings; nine cases went to the public prosecutor. In Grisons, the Office for Hunting and Fisheries registered more than 1,000 fines and reports every year from 2012 to 2020; since 2021 these figures have no longer been published. How rarely these lead to criminal convictions is shown by the animal welfare database of the Foundation for Animals in Law: for the years 2018 to 2022 it contains only 17 convictions nationwide for animal cruelty during recreational hunting, all with suspended fines.

These figures are minimum values. Heinrich Haller, former director of the Swiss National Park, documented several hundred proven poaching cases since 1910 in the Engadine, the Müstair Valley and the neighbouring foreign territory alone. Within the National Park itself, at least 77 poached animals have been identified since 1910: 34 chamois, 28 red deer, 9 Alpine ibex, 3 roe deer and 3 golden eagles.

Grisons public prosecutor Claudio Riedi explained the missing figures by saying that poaching proceedings are often combined with other offences and therefore do not appear in the statistics as poaching. What is meant as an explanation actually describes the problem: an offence that does not exist statistically cannot be addressed politically.

Forms of hunting crime

Hunting crime in Switzerland is more varied than the classic image of the nocturnal poacher. The documented forms include:

Illegal kills of huntable species: Recreational hunters who shoot outside the hunting season, without a permit, in other people's hunting grounds or beyond their allocated quota. In the Prättigau, the Grisons cantonal police solved ten cases in 2021 in which a local recreational hunter had been regularly killing chamois and roe bucks, as well as non-huntable stags, outside the hunting season since 2014.

Deliberate killing of protected species: Killing a lynx, wolf, golden eagle or bird of prey is not a trivial offence but a crime prosecuted ex officio (Art. 17 JSG). Even so, KORA data, media reports and court rulings document a large number of cases. Since 1999, at least 13 wolves in Switzerland have been demonstrably poached, and according to experts the number of unreported cases is considerably higher. More recent cases: in Poschiavo, a recreational hunter shot a protected wolf on 1 September 2025 (Criminal complaint, conviction), and in Herbriggen VS a recreational hunter shot a she-wolf that he claims to have mistaken for a fox. For the lynx, illegal killing is the second most common cause of death, according to WWF Switzerland.

Snare traps and poisoning: In the Valais pre-Alps, the research team led by Prof. Raphaël Arlettaz (University of Bern) discovered in 2016 a system of 17 lynx traps, three of them still active, strategically placed at the only migration corridor into Valais. In the canton of Fribourg, Grand Council member and recreational hunter Roger Schuwey was convicted after laying poisoned bait.

Mistaken kills and negligence: The 'black list' of documented cases includes a recreational hunter who shot a tomcat because he took it for a fox, another who killed an Icelandic pony instead of a wild boar, and recreational hunters who killed four roe deer in a nature reserve in Bilten. A study by the Swiss Animal Protection STS concluded that recreational hunters are among the worst marksmen.

Organised poaching: In the canton of Jura, four recreational hunters, including an auxiliary game warden, poached a total of 138 roe deer, 36 hares, 12 wild boars and 11 chamois between 2002 and 2006. In Poschiavo, three men were convicted in 2021 of having illegally killed three red deer and a protected common buzzard within a single year.

More on this: The blacklist of JagdSchweiz and Dossier: Hunting Accidents in Switzerland

Who monitors recreational hunters?

Oversight of recreational hunting in Switzerland is structurally compromised. In most cantons, it is the hunting administrations themselves, authorities that are institutionally intertwined with the recreational hunting community, that are supposed to punish violations, or not. The wildlife wardens who carry out checks in the field are understaffed: in many cantons, only a handful of game wardens are responsible for hundreds of recreational hunters.

Overlaps between hunting supervision and the recreational hunting community are not the exception but the rule. In the canton of Jura, one of the convicted poachers was an auxiliary game warden. In Grisons, a man found guilty of poaching was at the same time a police officer in the neighbouring village. In Valais, RTS investigations quoted an anonymous employee of the cantonal hunting service as saying that the office used to operate on the motto that a "good lynx" was "a dead lynx". The same employee admitted to having shot a lynx himself.

Nine cantons refused to hand over data on mistaken kills to the Swiss Animal Protection (STS), despite reference to the Freedom of Information Act. This refusal is not a sign of transparency, but of a system that places self-regulation above public accountability.

More on this: Dossier: The recreational hunting lobby in Switzerland and argumentation guide for professional game wardens

Prosecution: why proceedings are dropped

The Swiss Hunting Act (JSG) distinguishes between offences (Art. 17: custodial sentence of up to one year or a fine) and minor infractions (Art. 18: fine of up to 20,000 francs). In practice, however, penalties regularly fall at the lower end of the scale. The recreational hunter who shot a golden eagle in Seewis in 1976 paid a fine of 250 francs. A man from Valais with no hunting licence or weapons permit, who repeatedly shot at red deer from his car and filmed himself doing so, received a twelve-month custodial sentence and a fine of 800 francs from the Entremont district court, one of the harshest penalties in recent years. The normal case looks different: for the wolf poached in Poschiavo, the Grisons public prosecutor issued a penalty order on 18 June 2026 imposing a fine and compensation for the animal's value, and the recreational hunter kept his hunting licence. According to the "Walliser Bote", the shooter from Herbriggen was fined 300 francs .

The main problems in prosecution are these: poaching takes place in remote areas, there are hardly any witnesses, the evidence is thin, and dead animals are often not found or not examined. In Valais, investigations following reports from hikers who had found traps went nowhere for years because the police could no longer find the traps during later checks. Only the research work of the University of Bern, which secured DNA traces on the snares, led to a conviction.

Another problem is the statute of limitations. Contraventions become time-barred after three years, offences under the hunting act after seven years (Art. 97 and 109 of the Swiss Criminal Code). Given the difficult evidentiary situation, these periods are frequently insufficient. On top of this, when a recreational hunter is convicted, he does not automatically lose his hunting licence in many cantons. The rules on withdrawal vary from canton to canton and are often toothless.

Cantons in focus

Valais: systemic looking the other way

The canton of Valais is the best-documented hotspot of hunting crime in Switzerland. Of the 13 wolves proven to have been poached since 1999, seven were in Valais. The study by Prof. Raphaël Arlettaz (University of Bern) showed in 2020 that the strikingly low lynx populations in Valais can only be explained by poaching. His team found 17 snares at the only lynx migration corridor. The DNA on the snares led to a recreational hunter who had already been photographed next to two dead lynx in 1995, but was acquitted at the time.

Arlettaz spoke of a “systemic problem” in Valais government offices and a “culture of silence”. The then President of the Valais Council of State, Maurice Tornay, had used the formula “see, shoot, shovel, shut up” in a 2013 interview with Kanal 9, a sentence that became the subject of a criminal complaint (Valais wolf stories).

More on this: All articles in the Crime and hunting category

Schwyz: bounties, poaching and loyalty to the milieu

The canton of Schwyz was described in one analysis as an “Eldorado for hunting crimes”. Documented cases include snare poaching near Pfäffikon, prohibited hunting methods such as wire snares, and a bounty system in which compensation for livestock killed de facto acts as a premium on wolves. The prosecution rate for hunting offences is low, and the ties between recreational hunters, hunting authorities and local politics are close.

More on this: The psychology of recreational hunting in the canton of Schwyz

Grisons: unreported cases and a border region

Grisons is the canton with the most kills and an estimated 10 to 20 undetected poaching cases per year. Its proximity to Italy and Austria facilitates cross-border poaching. In Val Poschiavo, on 1 September 2025, the first day of the high hunt, a poached wolf was found, and in the Prättigau the police uncovered a years-long poaching series in 2021. The public prosecutor reports 2 to 3 cases per year that proceed as far as an indictment, which points to a high number of unreported cases.

Predators as the main victims

Predators such as lynx, wolf and birds of prey are disproportionately affected by poaching, not because they happen to end up in the crosshairs, but because they are deliberately eliminated. The motivation differs fundamentally from classic poaching: it is not about the individual animal killed, but about removing a competitor that stands in the way of recreational hunting or small livestock farming. In a documentary, Pro Natura spoke of a “second extermination” of the lynx in Switzerland.

The KORA foundation confirms: the most common known cause of death for wolves in Switzerland is the authorised kill, followed by traffic accidents and illegal killings. For the lynx, illegal killing is the second most common cause of death according to WWF. Particularly alarming: researchers at the KORA foundation documented several cases of “fallen-silent transmitters” among radio-collared lynx, which are very likely attributable to illegal killings. Without radio telemetry, many of these cases would never have been discovered.

Birds of prey are affected too. In the Swiss National Park, three golden eagles have been documented as poaching victims since 1910. Poisoning cases, in which birds of prey were killed using baited carcasses, are known from several cantons. The Swiss Ornithological Institute in Sempach has warned for years that the number of unreported cases of persecution of birds of prey is high.

More on this: Dossier: The Wolf in Europe and The importance of the lynx for preserving biodiversity

The Geneva model as a counter-example

Since 1974, the canton of Geneva has shown that professional wildlife management works without recreational hunting. The state-employed Gardes de l’environnement are trained professionals with a clear mandate and public accountability. There is no overlap between those who enforce the rules and those who are subject to them, no hunting associations expected to oversee their own members, and no recreational hunters working as auxiliary wildlife wardens.

Geneva matters for the question of hunting crime because its model removes the structural conflict of interest: anyone holding a monopoly over firearms in the forest must be trained, supervised and independent. In the licence hunting system used by most Swiss cantons, this is not the case.

More on this: Abolishing recreational hunting: the Geneva model and Dossier: Hunting ban in Switzerland

What needs to change

• National poaching statistics: The federal government must introduce uniform, publicly accessible statistics on hunting offences. Without a data basis, there can be no evidence-based policy.
• Independent hunting oversight: Oversight of recreational hunting must not lie with bodies that are institutionally entangled with the recreational hunting community. Professional, independent wildlife wardens along the lines of the Geneva model are the solution.
• Automatic licence withdrawal: Anyone convicted of hunting offences must have their hunting licence withdrawn as a matter of course, uniformly across all cantons and without discretion on the part of the hunting authority.
• DNA database for wild animals: Establishing a forensic DNA database for poached predators, comparable to the prosecution of other offences.
• Whistleblower protection: Anonymous reporting systems for suspected poaching that do not run through the hunting administration but go directly to the public prosecutor.
• Higher penalties and longer limitation periods: Current fines are no deterrent. For protected species, the limitation period should be extended and the range of penalties increased.

Talking points

“Poaching is a marginal phenomenon; there are only a few isolated cases.”

This claim cannot be substantiated, because there is no national statistic. The few cantonal figures available show double-digit case numbers per canton per year. According to experts such as Heinrich Haller, Prof. Arlettaz and the WWF, the number of unreported cases is considerably higher. For the lynx, illegal killing is the second most common cause of death. Speaking of “isolated cases” is disingenuous given this evidence.

“Recreational hunters regulate themselves and take action against black sheep.”

The documented cases show the opposite. In Valais, according to independent investigations, there was a culture of looking the other way. In the canton of Jura, an auxiliary game warden was himself involved in organised poaching. In Grisons, a poacher was also a police officer. Self-regulation does not work when those who carry out the checks and those who are checked belong to the same milieu.

“Predators are not deliberately targeted; these are tragic cases of mistaken identity.”

The study by Prof. Arlettaz documents a system of 17 strategically placed snare traps along the only lynx migration corridor into Valais. That is not mistaken identity but planned elimination. Pro Natura spoke of an impending “second extermination” of the lynx. The KORA data on “fallen silent” transmitters among radio-collared lynx reinforce the suspicion of systematic persecution.

“The penalties are appropriate; the hunting act is sufficient.”

A fine of 250 francs for a poached golden eagle. A limitation period of three years for minor offences. No automatic withdrawal of the licence. Current practice shows that the level of punishment has no deterrent effect. Anyone who poaches faces, at worst, a fine lower than that for speeding on the motorway.

“There is poaching in the canton of Geneva too, so the hunting ban is pointless.”

Nobody claims that a hunting ban completely prevents poaching. What Geneva shows is that a system without structural conflicts of interest can combat poaching more effectively. Professional game wardens have no personal incentive to eliminate predators. They carry out checks and are themselves checked, independently of hunting associations and local recreational hunting politics.

Quick links

Related articles and dossiers on wildbeimwild.com:

• The blacklist of JagdSchweiz
• Category: Crime and Hunting
• Dossier: Hunting accidents in Switzerland
• Dossier: Hunting and Animal Welfare
• Dossier: The Wolf in Europe
• argumentation guide for professional game wardens
• Abolishing recreational hunting: the Geneva model
• Dossier: The recreational hunting lobby in Switzerland
• The psychology of recreational hunting in the canton of Schwyz
• Why recreational hunting fails as population control

Sources: KORA Foundation (loss data for wolf and lynx), WWF Switzerland (position on hunting and trophy hunting), Pro Natura (documentation “Who is killing the lynx?”), Prof. Raphaël Arlettaz, University of Bern (study on lynx poaching in Valais, 2020), Heinrich Haller (poaching in the National Park and the Engadine), Tierwelt (research “Urgently wanted: figures on poaching”, 2016), SRF (“Poaching in Switzerland: the lure of illegal trophy hunting”, 2021), Swiss Animal Protection STS (investigation of mistaken kills), Federal Act on Hunting and the Protection of Wild Mammals and Birds (JSG, Art. 17 and 18), cantonal hunting statistics (AG, BE, VS, GR, ZH), 2024 hunting report of the canton of Ticino, Foundation for Animal Law (database of animal welfare criminal cases 2018 to 2022), Grisons public prosecutor (penalty order Poschiavo, 18 June 2026).