Special hunt in Graubünden

Every year in November and December, the canton of Graubünden calls for a special hunt. Officially, it is a measure for forest regeneration and population control. However, closer examination reveals a corrective mechanism that has become institutionalized routine: the regular hunt in September fails to meet its culling targets, the special hunt compensates, and this cycle has been repeating itself since the introduction of the cantonal hunting law in 1989. What was intended as an exceptional measure has become a structural signal that calls into question the very planning of hunts.

Graubünden is a canton with a system of hunting licenses. Every year, several thousand licenses are issued, granting holders of recreational hunting rights access to the entire canton – without a permanently assigned hunting area, without institutionally enshrined responsibility for specific areas, and without long-term accountability for wildlife or habitats. This system of special hunting rights is the visible symptom of a system that cannot adhere to its own planning logic – and whose mechanism has therefore been controversial in hunting policy for years.

This dossier systematically questions the special hunting regulations in Graubünden. The focus is not on moral judgments, but on verifiable facts: figures, culling targets, implementation realities, biological impact, and political resistance. Our cantonal analyses provide a more in-depth perspective: Psychology of Hunting in the Cantons of Graubünden , Bern , Valais , and Geneva , etc.

What awaits you here

High-altitude hunting and special hunting: The system of improvement. Why Graubünden has relied on special hunting for decades, what high-altitude hunting in September is supposed to achieve but regularly fails to achieve, and what this structurally reveals about Graubünden's patent hunting system.
What is permitted on special hunts – and what that means. Which animals are allowed to be shot on special hunts that would be prohibited on regular hunts, why pregnant hinds, does, and their fawns are legally killed, and what this means in terms of animal welfare and hunting ethics.
Hunting figures for 2025: What the hunting plan really shows. Concrete figures from the Graubünden hunting plan for 2025, comparison with previous years, development of the deer population and what the figures say about the claimed success of the regulation.
The 2019 popular initiative and its aftermath. How an initiative with over 10,000 signatures sought to abolish special hunting, why the Grand Council rejected it by a vote of 96 to 1, what information was withheld from parliament, and why the political resistance of the Swiss Wildlife Protection Association continues.
The Swiss National Park: Wildlife without hunting within the canton itself. What the hunting-free national park has demonstrated for over a hundred years, why stable ungulate populations without recreational hunting are not an exception, and what former National Park Director Heinrich Haller has to say about it.
Wolves, livestock protection, and institutional failure. What the Calanda pack empirically demonstrates about wolf management, why wolf culls in Graubünden lack sound scientific justification, and what the Val Fex case reveals about the enforcement of the cantonal hunting administration.
What needs to change. Specific demands: abolition of special hunting regulations, redesign of high-altitude hunting, game warden structures, consistent livestock protection, transparent full cost accounting, and a federal legal framework.
Argumentation: Answers to the most common justifications for the special hunt in Graubünden.
Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers at a glance.

High-altitude hunting and special hunting: The system of improvement

The high-altitude hunt in Graubünden lasts 21 days in September. It is the canton's central hunting event – and also the most consequential due to its structural weakness: Every year, around 1,000 fines and charges are issued against recreational hunters, more than in any other canton in Switzerland. Nevertheless, the high-altitude hunt is officially the instrument by which the canton is supposed to meet its culling targets.

For decades, this hasn't been the case. In 2019, the reference year for the initiative, the hunting plan called for 5,430 deer to be killed in September. In reality, 3,404 animals were shot – around 2,000 fewer than planned. This difference had to be made up for in a special hunt in November and December. The pattern has repeated itself annually ever since: In the 2025 high season, 3,432 red deer and 2,502 roe deer were killed, a result slightly above the 20-year average, and yet the canton is still calling for another special hunt in November and December.

The hunting structure favors male trophy animals, while females and young are often spared during the main hunt. This creates a selection bias, which is then addressed in special hunts through the targeted culling of females and young. What is termed a "special" hunt has long since become institutionalized routine: a corrective measure that has become the norm and represents a structural signal that calls into question the very hunting plan itself.

More on this topic: Psychology of hunting in the canton of Graubünden and special hunts in 2025: More kills – instead of listening to the wolf

What is allowed on special hunts – and what that means

The special hunting regulations in Graubünden permit practices that would be prohibited in regular high-altitude hunting: the shooting of pregnant and lactating hinds, as well as does with their fawns, entire family groups, and social groups. Shooting pregnant hinds results in the death of fetuses in the womb. The initiators of the 2019 popular initiative described these scenes as "morally, ethically, and from a hunting perspective reprehensible," and they themselves claim to be hobby hunters and animal lovers.

This practice also has serious biological consequences. Wild animals whose social structures are disrupted by the targeted removal of dominant animals and leading females lose their orientation, territorial order, and communication systems. Hobby hunters, such as those employed in special hunts, drive animals in panic through their refuges, leading to increased browsing damage to forest trees, not less. Special hunts thus produce the very browsing pressure they are officially supposed to combat.

Furthermore, the special hunt coincides with the winter dormancy of wild animals, a period of reduced food intake, energy conservation, and the beginning of pregnancy. According to stress studies, interventions during this particularly vulnerable timeframe generate especially high cortisol levels. From an animal welfare perspective, the special hunt is therefore the opposite of a controlled population control measure.

More on this topic: Wild animals, fear of death and lack of stunning , and studies on the impact of hunting on wild animals.

Shooting figures for 2025: What the shooting plan really shows

For the 2025 special hunt, the Graubünden hunting authority plans to cull 1,711 female red deer and their calves, 281 roe deer, and 10 chamois. The number of red deer culled is lower than last year because the red deer population has been declining slightly since 2020. However, more roe deer are to be culled than in 2024 because too many bucks and too few does were killed during the regular hunt. This illustrates the planning logic: selection errors from the regular hunt are corrected during the special hunt by culling females and young animals.

There are no upper limits on the number of wild boars that can be hunted in Graubünden year-round, justified by alleged damage to agriculture and forests. This is ecologically paradoxical: wild boars are the natural landscapers of the forest. If they are intensively hunted there, they move onto agricultural land, precisely the areas where damage occurs. Here, too, the hunting system creates the very problems it claims to solve.

The true significance of the culling figures lies in the trend: despite years of intensive hunting with over 3,000 red deer killed per season, the deer population in Graubünden has at times risen to 16,500 animals. If culling were genuine population control, this increase would not be possible. Instead, it demonstrates the compensatory population dynamics in real time: the more intensive the hunting, the higher the reproduction rate and the greater the need for correction during the next special hunt.

The 2019 popular initiative and its successor

In spring 2019, a committee submitted a popular initiative to abolish special hunting seasons in Graubünden – with over 10,000 signatures, a record participation for a cantonal hunting petition. The initiative did not call for an end to hunting, but rather a practical restructuring: extending the high season hunting period by four days to 25 days, fulfilling the culling quotas by the end of October at the latest, and intensified hunting in wildlife reserves during this period. The initiative was based on the study "Red Deer in the Rätikon" (2015), which demonstrates that the vast majority of red deer have already returned to the canton by October.

The Grand Council rejected the initiative by a vote of 96 to 1 – after being denied crucial information. Government Councillor Mario Cavigelli (CVP) had failed to disclose that the Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) had concluded the initiative did not violate any higher-level law and that alternatives to the status quo did exist. The IG Wild beim Wild (Wildlife Interest Group) subsequently filed a criminal complaint against Cavigelli; the initiators had to pursue costly legal action all the way to the Federal Supreme Court before the vote could even take place. The popular initiative narrowly failed at the ballot box on May 19, 2019. Initiator Christian Mathis demanded approximately 113,000 Swiss francs in compensation from the canton for the incurred legal costs; the canton refused to pay, and the case was appealed to the Administrative Court.

The political resistance is not over. Wildlife Protection Switzerland has launched a follow-up initiative against the special hunt. The democratic debate surrounding the special hunt in Graubünden continues and will have to be conducted under better information conditions than in 2019.

More on this topic: Graubünden: Yes to the abolition of special hunting and hunting in Switzerland: Fact check, hunting methods, criticism

The Swiss National Park: Wildlife without hunting in the canton itself

Anyone wanting to test the theory that wild animals inevitably "run out of control" without recreational hunting doesn't need to look to Geneva. The strongest counterexample lies right in the heart of Graubünden itself: the Swiss National Park. Recreational hunting has been prohibited there for over a century. Hoofed animal populations fluctuate within natural ranges – controlled by climate, food availability, disease, and predators, not by hunting quotas.

Former national park director and wildlife biologist Heinrich Haller sums it up perfectly: “The park is a piece of wilderness left to its own devices, where no one hunts. That’s not a problem. Even without hunting, there aren’t suddenly too many foxes, hares, or birds. Experience shows that nature can be left to its own devices.” This isn’t some romantic notion of nature conservation, but rather the empirical result of more than a hundred years of observation in the canton of Graubünden itself.

The national park directly contradicts the central narrative of the cantonal hunting policy: that intensive hunting is necessary to maintain ecological balance. If a hunting-free area in the same canton maintains this balance without intervention, then the interventions outside the park do not stem from scientific necessity, but from institutional constraints, tradition, and political will.

Wolves, livestock protection, and institutional failure

In Graubünden, the wolf is the most effective natural regulator of ungulate populations and, at the same time, the most targeted animal in the canton's hunting policy. The Calanda massif provides the strongest locally grounded data point for this: Since the reintroduction of the first wolf pack to Switzerland in 2011, the number of deer in the wolf territory has decreased by an estimated third – while the deer population in the entire canton of Graubünden increased by 18 percent during the same period. This is a trophic cascade in real time: Wolves alter the behavior of prey animals, deer avoid risk zones, and young trees can grow. A study by the University of Leeds (2025) quantifies the indirect CO₂ sequestration effect of a single wolf – through the reduction of browsing pressure and the enabling of forest regeneration – at around 6,080 tons per year, corresponding to a monetary value of approximately 178,000 Swiss francs. The study was developed for the Scottish Highlands; However, the principle of trophic cascade also applies to alpine forest ecosystems such as those in Graubünden.

A study of 3,000 wolf scat samples also shows that over 96 percent of the prey remains came from roe deer, red deer, and wild boar. Livestock accounted for less than 1 percent. Nevertheless, 47 wolves were killed in Graubünden alone during the 2024/25 season. The canton justifies these interventions with claims of "damage prevention," "increasing wariness," and "preserving social structures"—a logical contradiction: Anyone who wants to protect social structures must explain why repeated intervention in packs, including pups, does not increase the risk of behavioral changes and maladaptation.

The Val Fex case (August 2025) brought the institutional credibility problem to a head: 37 sheep were killed or euthanized by wolves on an alpine pasture in the municipality of Sils in the Engadine. The cantonal communications office claimed the attack occurred "despite implemented livestock protection measures." However, investigations show that at the time of the attack, neither livestock guardian dogs nor wolf-proof fences were present – the animals were grazing in an area explicitly designated without protective measures according to the individual farm's livestock protection plan. Office director Adrian Arquint is therefore facing criminal charges for allegedly providing false information to the public. Meanwhile, scientific reviews conclude that non-lethal measures are, on average, more effective against livestock attacks than lethal interventions – and that the evidence base for "killing helps" is weak and contradictory.

More on this topic: Psychology of hunting in the canton of Graubünden and special hunts in 2025: More kills – instead of listening to the wolf

What would need to change

Abolishing special hunts as an institutionalized routine correction: Hunting planning that has generated the same need for improvement since the introduction of the hunting law in 1989 is not working. The first step is an honest analysis: Why does big game hunting systematically fail to achieve its objectives? As long as this question is not addressed politically, special hunts will remain what they are – a symptom manager without addressing the root causes.
Extending and ecologically redesigning the high-altitude hunting season: The 2019 popular initiative made a fact-based proposal: extending the high-altitude hunting season by four days, utilizing the month of October, when, according to studies, the majority of deer return. This approach deserves a serious political reassessment, regardless of the referendum defeat.
Consistent, mandatory livestock protection before any culling of protected predators: Wolf culls without proven and documented exhaustion of non-lethal measures are legally questionable and scientifically unjustified. Livestock protection must be financed, monitored, and enshrined as a condition – not as a retroactive fig leaf.
Independent oversight of the cantonal hunting administration: The close institutional ties between the hunting administration, hunters, and agricultural interests in Graubünden make independent oversight structurally difficult. An externally staffed, scientifically based oversight body is needed for issuing hunting permits, verifying livestock protection measures, and communicating with the public.
Pilot projects with hunting-free zones modeled on national parks: The Swiss National Park demonstrates what is possible in the Grisons mountains without recreational hunting. Hunting-free zones with systematic wildlife monitoring would provide reliable comparative data and shift the political debate from narrative to empirical evidence.
Transparent full cost accounting for special hunts: What are the costs of special hunts, including administrative expenses, compensation for damages, enforcement costs, and legal costs? Anyone defending special hunts as a "cost-neutral regulatory instrument" must present an honest, comprehensive cost breakdown. Sample motions: Sample texts for motions critical of hunting and Graubünden: Yes, to the abolition of special hunts

Argumentation

"Special hunts are necessary because regular hunting does not adequately regulate populations." This is the strongest argument for special hunts and, at the same time, the strongest argument against the entire system. If regular hunting has systematically failed to meet its objectives for over 30 years and special hunts are institutionalized as an annual corrective measure, then the system is not working. Regulation that constantly reproduces its own needs is not regulation at all.

“Without special hunting regulations, the forest would suffer from browsing damage.” Browsing damage is real – but its cause is not too much game, but too little undisturbed space. Driven hunts and battues force deer and roe deer into retreat areas, where they graze on available vegetation under increased stress. The hunting-free national park in Graubünden demonstrates that stable forest-wildlife ecosystems can develop without culling quotas if natural predators and undisturbed habitats are present.

"Special hunting is correctly regulated under animal welfare law." Killing pregnant and nursing females, allowing fetuses to die in the womb, and disrupting social structures during hibernation does not correspond to the spirit of animal welfare law, which recognizes "the dignity of the creature" as a constitutional principle. The fact that this practice is legal demonstrates the limitations of current animal welfare law – not its ethical acceptability.

"The 2019 referendum democratically confirmed the special hunting permit." The referendum took place under conditions in which parliament and the public were denied crucial information – namely, the Federal Office for the Environment's (BAFU) assessment that the initiative did not violate any higher-ranking law. A democratic process based on incomplete information provides no substantive legitimacy for the referendum result.

“Wolves are the real problem, not hunting.” In the Calanda massif, the deer density in wolf territory has decreased by a third since 2011, while it has increased by 18 percent across the canton. A study of 3,000 wolf scat samples shows that livestock make up less than 1 percent of their prey. Wolves are not the problem in Graubünden; if left undisturbed, they would be a key part of the solution.

"Special hunting is self-financing." This calculation ignores all external costs: compensation for wildlife damage, subsidies for protective forests, government monitoring costs, legal costs, and costs resulting from hunting pressure-induced wildlife concentration and browsing damage. An honest overall accounting is still pending – and the hunting lobby has no interest in seeing it done.

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Our claim

The special hunt in Graubünden is not a regulatory instrument. It is the recurring annual proof that the Graubünden hunting system has been unable to meet its own planning objectives since the introduction of the cantonal hunting law in 1989, and that this failure is managed institutionally instead of being addressed. The 2019 popular initiative demonstrated that civil society resistance with over 10,000 signatures is possible, but was politically hampered by incomplete information, and this resistance continued with the follow-up initiative by Wildlife Protection Switzerland. The hunting-free Swiss National Park and the Calanda pack have demonstrated for years that stable wildlife populations and natural forest regeneration without recreational hunting are not the exception – but the rule.

The consequence is logical here as well: Anyone who wants genuine wildlife management must decouple it from hunting quotas, base it on scientific principles, and subject it to independent oversight. Special hunting is not the emergency exit of a functioning system; it is visible proof that the system needs fundamental rethinking. This dossier will be continuously updated as new figures, studies, or political developments necessitate it.

More on the topic of hobby hunting: In our dossier on hunting, we compile fact checks, analyses and background reports.