Valais wolf balance sheet: figures of a massacre

The canton of Valais calls it «proactive regulation». What the official tally from 1 September 2025 to 31 January 2026 documents is something else entirely: the systematic destruction of wolf packs, the deliberate killing of juveniles, and a state-organised hunting machinery that turns recreational hunters into an auxiliary force for official kill programmes. 24 wolves were killed during this period, including seven young wolves from three packs, shot under a so-called «baseline regulation» that explicitly permits the removal of two-thirds of the juveniles born that year.

Behind these figures lie destroyed family groups, individuals killed within complex social structures, and a legal situation that is increasingly turning against Switzerland: in October 2024, the Bureau of the Bern Convention stated that preventive culls on account of mere “potential damage” rested on a misinterpretation of the Convention. In December 2024, the Standing Committee of the Council of Europe unanimously opened an investigation procedure against Switzerland. Meanwhile, Valais continues to expand its bureaucratic culling apparatus. This dossier shows what the figures mean, who makes the decisions, which legal questions remain open, and what a credible wolf policy for the Alpine region would have to deliver instead.

As of October 2026

In Valais, the regulation window for the 2026/27 period runs from 1 September 2026 to 31 January 2027. The canton counts eleven packs (as of 30 September 2026). On 28 August, it submitted five applications to the FOEN: the complete removal of the Augstbord, Nanz and Réchy-Anniviers packs, as well as the killing of up to two-thirds of this year's young wolves at Nendaz-Isérables and Les Toules.

The FOEN approved four of these: on 14 September the young-wolf kills at Nendaz-Isérables and Les Toules, on 23 September the total removal of the Augstbord pack, and on 29 September that of the Nanz pack. No decision has yet been made on Réchy-Anniviers. Within the designated perimeters, recreational hunters holding a regulation permit may also shoot. Details in the article Nanz pack cleared for total kill, the running count of wolves killed in the counter Wolf kills Switzerland 2026/27.

On the population: according to the cantonal report from February 2026, 75 wolves were genetically identified in Valais in 2025, compared with 61 in 2024. A total of 318 livestock animals were killed in 2025.

A recreational hunter who shot a female wolf in Herbriggen, claiming he had mistaken her for a fox, was, according to the «Walliser Bote», fined 300 francs. In addition, Valais intends to be the first canton to apply for the regulation of the lynx. Further incidents in the Valais Ticker 2026/27.

What awaits you here

• What the 2025/2026 report really shows: The concrete figures, packs, kill perimeters, and the goal of reducing the wolf population from eleven to three packs — and what this means biologically and ethically.
• Young animals as preferred targets: ethics turned upside down: Why the « basic regulation » of young wolves is not only a violation of animal welfare but also biologically counterproductive.
• Recreational hunters as a state auxiliary force: How the canton of Valais systematically merges recreational hunting with sovereign kill orders.
• The bureaucratic cost of the massacre: What 13,390 working hours and several full-time positions in Valais's wolf management actually cost — and what for.
• Darbellay and the wolf war: How a state councillor with a recreational hunting background is driving the kill policy forward, sidelining scientific and legal minimum standards in the process.
• Fabio Regazzi and the Swiss model as political fiction: Why the Swedish model, touted as an example to follow, fails in court — and why this doesn't bother Regazzi.
• Bern Convention: what the investigation procedure means: A legal classification of the European procedure against Switzerland, and what preventive kills have to do with international law.
• What genuine coexistence in the Alpine region would mean: The political and structural measures that would be necessary, but which are consistently avoided.
• Argumentation guide: Answers to the most common justifications for the kill policy.
• Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers.

What the 2025/2026 report really shows

For the 2025/2026 period, the canton of Valais applied to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) for permission to remove the Chablais, Salentin and Simplon packs entirely, and received it. In addition, a “basic regulation” was approved for three further packs (Réchy-Anniviers, Nendaz-Isérables, Posette-Trient), allowing the canton to kill two thirds of the pups born this year. From 1 September 2025 to 31 January 2026, 24 wolves were killed: 17 in the complete removal of packs (Chablais 10, Salentin 3, Simplon 4) and 7 young wolves under the basic regulation. Between 1 June and 31 August 2025, professional game wardens had already killed three wolves on the basis of three individual culling permits.

In parallel, 318 livestock animals were killed by wolves in the canton in 2025: 191 in Upper Valais (in 48 attacks), 127 in Lower Valais (in 33 attacks). The political objective that Darbellay has publicly formulated is unambiguous: the number of packs in Valais is to be reduced from eleven to three, the legal minimum for the region. This is not «management» in any scientific sense. It is a political decision to maximally reduce a population, taken by a state councillor who is himself a recreational hunter, and implemented with recreational hunters as the kill squad.

By comparison: in the canton of Grisons, 35 wolves were killed in 2025. CHWOLF has documented the balance of the second regulation period nationwide: 92 dead wolves, including the entire national park pack. The official designation of these interventions as «proactive regulation» conceals what they actually are: the pre-emptive elimination of wolf packs before concrete, serious and repeated damage has occurred. It is precisely this practice that the Bern Convention has classified as illegal.

More on this: Wolf: ecological function and political reality and Problem politicians instead of problem wolves: Switzerland is hunting the wrong animal

Young animals as the preferred target: ethics turned upside down

The «basic regulation» (the removal of up to two thirds of young wolves in certain packs) is the most ethically problematic part of Valais's wolf policy. Young animals are not killed as individual cases with proven damage, but as a planned quota: 2 young wolves in the Réchy-Anniviers pack, 3 in the Nendaz-Isérables pack, 2 in the Posette-Trient pack, with the result that the basic regulation was «fully implemented».

This is not only contrary to animal welfare, it is biologically counterproductive. In their first years of life, young wolves learn how territorial behaviour, prey selection and avoidance of human infrastructure work by observing the pack structure. Experienced lead wolves pass on this knowledge. Those who kill young wolves before they have learned how their pack deals with livestock farming and cultivated landscapes eliminate precisely those learning processes that could reduce conflicts in the long term. Packs with a disrupted age structure and a lack of experienced members are demonstrably more prone to conflict, not less.

An ethic worthy of the name would define young animals as a red line. The Valais system reverses this principle: young animals become the preferred target group because they are easier to kill and statistically deliver quick «success». Calling this «regulation» conceals the fact that the foundation of all moral responsibility (protecting the most vulnerable) is being deliberately ignored here.

More on this: Hunting and Animal Welfare: What the Practice Does to Wild Animals and Wild animals, mortal fear and lack of stunning

Recreational hunters as a state support unit

The canton of Valais has explicitly integrated recreational hunting into the state kill system. In the 2025/2026 regulation period, recreational hunters with a valid regulation permit are allowed to kill wolves within the defined kill perimeters, and in addition to professional game wardens during the complete removal of a pack. Specific training for wolf regulation is conducted annually for all registered recreational hunters. Specialised recreational hunters are integrated into a «Hunting Support Group (UGJ)» under the responsibility of the cantonal Office for Hunting, Fishing and Wildlife (DJFW).

This is an institutional fusion of recreational hunting interests and sovereign mandate that is unparalleled in Switzerland in its consequences. The canton delegates state killing tasks to recreational hunters, thereby granting state legitimacy to a leisure activity that neither justifies nor deserves it. At the same time, it creates an infrastructure whose logic is oriented exclusively towards killing: specially trained recreational hunters, generously sized kill perimeters, a politically set reduction target. Anyone who works within this system will no longer question whether kills are necessary, but only how many are possible.

Environmental groups have precisely identified this mechanism: by deliberately defining large kill perimeters, Valais creates the opportunity to kill a maximum number of wolves. This is not interpretation. It is the documented functioning of a system whose goal is maximum killing, using minimal protection as a fig leaf.

More on this: Hunters: role, power, training and criticism and The psychology of hunting in the canton of Valais

The bureaucratic costs of the massacre

According to the official report, 13,390 working hours were invested in wolf management and wolf regulation in Valais in 2025, compared with 16,400 hours in 2024. At the same time, as part of the federal programme agreement 2025–2028, 3.2 full-time positions were created to support the department. Calculating with conservative full costs of 60 to 80 francs per hour, this amounts to between 800,000 and just over one million francs in tax money for 2025, for Valais wolf regulation alone. According to available estimates, killing a single wolf costs Swiss taxpayers around 35,000 francs.

The administrative apparatus is growing, and regulation is becoming increasingly professionalised. The crucial question is where these resources are flowing. The official report gives a clear answer: the focus is on case files, approval procedures and kill organisation. Consistent herd protection, structural advisory support for agriculture, long-term conflict prevention: these are tasks that appear in the report as rhetorical add-ons, not as operational priorities. “Coexistence” is the word that gets filled with new kill figures every year.

The canton does not transparently disclose these total costs in its report. This is not surprising in a canton that has for years faced accusations of cronyism, nepotism and lack of transparency, ranging from construction botch-ups and flood protection failures to political mismanagement scandals. When it comes to the wolf, governance is exercised with great severity, while fundamental questions about cost-effectiveness and efficacy go unasked.

More on this: Hunting laws and oversight: why self-supervision is not enough and Hunting in Switzerland: figures, systems, and the end of a narrative

Darbellay and the wolf war

Since taking office as head of the department responsible for the hunting authority, Christophe Darbellay has become the driving force behind Valais wolf policy. He is himself a recreational hunter and actively takes part in hunts. Since taking office, he has issued one kill decision after another, with a publicly stated goal: to reduce the number of wolf packs from eleven to three. Environmentalists describe his approach as «unscientific and counterproductive» and compare his rhetoric to a «wolf war», in which he portrays himself as the defender of the mountain population, while facts about herd protection, biology and the legal situation «tend to disturb rather than guide».

Darbellay presents himself as a Christian-inspired centrist politician. In practice, his department functions like an execution office for wolf populations: 27 dead wolves between June 2025 and January 2026, including seven young wolves, complete pack eliminations, and recreational hunters as a state-trained culling team. This stands in stark contrast to values such as the protection of life and the preservation of creation, to which he publicly appeals. The discrepancy between political self-presentation and actual conduct is documented and proven, and is best explained by the conflict of interest that arises when a recreational hunter heads the hunting authority.

What Darbellay stages in public is a culturally charged antagonism: wolf versus mountain farmer, conservationists versus «realistic» politics, Brussels versus Switzerland. This emotionalisation serves a political function: it creates a climate in which radical kill programmes can appear as the «reasonable middle ground», even though they are objectively neither necessary nor proportionate — and increasingly no longer legal. Our article Christophe Darbellay's war on wolves: polemic against the facts documents these patterns in detail.

More on this: Christophe Darbellay's war on wolves: polemic against the facts and Hunter lobby in Switzerland: how influence works

Fabio Regazzi and the Swedish model as political fiction

Centre Party Council of States member Fabio Regazzi from Ticino has for years promoted the Swedish wolf model as an example for Switzerland to follow: licence hunts, politically fixed population targets, rapid and plannable reduction. The problem: the Swedish model has failed in court or been massively curtailed, because Swedish and European courts have found that licence hunts on strictly protected species violate fundamental rule-of-law principles and species protection law.

Regazzi promises quick fixes and promotes a policy of knee-jerk reactions that pushes wildlife protection and the rule of law to the margins. The reality of the model he cites as an example does not fit his narrative, so he simply fails to mention it. This is symptomatic of a wolf policy that relies on emotionalisation because the facts work against it. Both Darbellay and Regazzi belong to a party that publicly invokes Christian values, yet practise a wolf policy in which «preservation of creation» appears, at best, in Sunday sermons.

From the perspective of IG Wild beim Wild, both are exemplary figures of a politically orchestrated campaign against the wolf: they shift the discourse away from fact-based solutions towards an emotionally charged culture war in which the wolf is turned into a screen onto which entirely different conflicts are projected: mountain agriculture versus nature conservation, cantonal sovereignty versus international agreements, tradition versus science.

More on this: Wolf in Europe: protection status, conflicts and political pressure and Hunting crisis in Europe: FACE fights for shots, Switzerland remains in the shadows

Bern Convention: What the investigation procedure means

The legal situation is clear, and Switzerland is ignoring it. In October 2024, the Bureau of the Bern Convention stated that preventive kills without concrete, repeated and significant damage are not covered by the Convention. In December 2024, the Standing Committee unanimously opened a case file against Switzerland after complaints from CH-Wolf and Avenir Loup Lynx Jura (ALLJ) were upheld. Even at that meeting, the FOEN's presentation met with considerable scepticism from the participating countries. Switzerland had to report back again in 2025.

What does this mean in concrete terms? With the revised Hunting Ordinance (JSV), which came into force on 1 February 2025, Switzerland explicitly legalised preventive kills of entire packs under certain conditions, including pups and young wolves as part of these packs. According to the Bern Convention's assessment, this legal basis does not comply with the international treaty that Switzerland ratified in 1979. Valais is consistently implementing this legal basis during the 2025/2026 regulation period, amid an ongoing investigation procedure that calls its legality into question. This contradiction is not a bureaucratic detail. It shows just how far Swiss wolf policy has strayed from minimum standards of the rule of law.

With its kill programme, Valais is also creating facts on the ground that make political reversal more difficult: whoever breaks up packs cannot restore their structure. Whoever kills young wolves destroys the population's accumulated learning. The irreversible consequences of this policy will only become visible once the investigation leads to concrete measures, and by then, structures that are currently being systematically destroyed will have to be rebuilt.

More on this: Illegal wolf hunting in Switzerland and How hunting associations influence policy and the public

What needs to change

A political approach that takes coexistence seriously would look radically different from the Valais model.

• Herd protection as a structural priority, not a token exercise: Consistent investment in livestock guardian dogs, night-time enclosures, fencing and advisory support for farmers, not as occasional funding but as a permanent part of the system with binding standards.
• Rethinking mountain agriculture policy: The question of which forms of livestock farming are compatible with predators in steep mountain terrain must be addressed politically, with direct payments that encourage rather than prevent adaptation.
• Protecting pack structures as a conflict-prevention measure: Experienced lead wolves and intact social structures demonstrably reduce conflicts. Protecting them is not sentimentality, it is biologically grounded conflict prevention.
• Kill bans for young animals: Defining young wolves as a target group violates animal welfare principles, is biologically counterproductive, and is legally problematic under the Bern Convention. An immediate ban is the bare minimum.
• Independent wolf population monitoring free of conflicts of interest: Monitoring and population estimates must be carried out by independent scientific institutions, without the involvement of hunting authorities or recreational hunting structures.
• Establish legal compliance with the Bern Convention: Preventive killing of entire packs must be removed from the Swiss legal basis, regardless of the outcome of the investigation.
• Template submissions: Template texts for hunting-critical motions and Template letter: Appeal for change in Switzerland

More on this: Herd protection in Switzerland and Alternatives to Hunting: What Really Helps, Without Killing Animals

Talking points

«318 livestock killed is unacceptable, the wolf must be regulated.» 318 livestock killed is a genuine problem. But the response to it determines whether coexistence is possible or not. Anyone who immediately demands a kill after every attack, without asking whether herd protection was adequate, whether grazing management could be adapted, and whether direct payments are creating the wrong incentives, does not solve the problem. They merely shift it: at the expense of the wolves and at the expense of the taxpayers who finance the kills.

«Proactive regulation prevents damage before it occurs.» Exactly what the Bern Convention says is illegal. Preventive killings of wild animals without concrete, significant and repeated damage are not covered by the international protection agreements to which Switzerland has acceded. What is marketed as "proactive" is legally "non-compliant", and the Council of Europe's unanimously adopted investigation procedure is the consequence.

"Recreational hunters are merely supporting the authorities, that's not hunting." Recreational hunters receive specific training for wolf kills, are integrated into state kill structures, and shoot wolves within state-defined perimeters. This is not support for an administrative task. It is the privatisation of killing assignments to an interest group whose main interest is the kill.

"The wolf threatens the mountain population and mountain agriculture." The wolf kills livestock. It does not threaten people: statistically zero attacks on humans in Switzerland. Mountain agriculture faces structural challenges related to direct payment systems, farm sizes and market conditions, none of which are solved by killing wolves. Those who make the wolf the cause of structural problems it did not create are engaging in politics with the wrong scapegoat.

"This is the legal implementation of the revised Hunting Ordinance." Yes, and this very revised Hunting Ordinance is the subject of an ongoing Council of Europe investigation procedure due to non-compliance with the Bern Convention. Legal under Swiss law and compliant with international conservation agreements are two different standards. According to the Council of Europe's assessment, Switzerland is currently violating the latter.

Quick links

Articles on Wild beim Wild:

• Valais Wolf Balance 2025/2026: Figures of a Massacre (Original Article)
• Christophe Darbellay's war on wolves: polemic against the facts
• Illegal wolf hunting in Switzerland
• Problem politicians instead of problem wolves: Switzerland is hunting the wrong animal
• Template letter: Appeal for change in Switzerland

Related dossiers:

• The golden jackal in Switzerland: A natural immigrant under political pressure
• The otter in Switzerland: Exterminated, returned and politically threatened
• The brown bear in Switzerland: Exterminated, returned and still unwanted
• The wildcat in Switzerland: Back from extinction, threatened by indifference
• The lynx in Switzerland: Predator, keystone species and political bone of contention
• The fox in Switzerland: The most hunted predator without a lobby
• Wolf: ecological function and political reality
• The wolf in Europe: How politics and recreational hunting are undermining species protection
• Wolf in Switzerland: facts, politics and the limits of hunting
• Valais wolf balance sheet: figures of a massacre
• Fox hunting without facts: How JagdSchweiz invents problems
• Herd protection in Switzerland: What works, what fails, and why kills are no solution

Our Standard

The Valais Wolf Balance 2025/2026 documents a system that systematically subordinates animal welfare, wildlife biology and international legal standards to a kill logic driven by recreational hunting interests and the livestock lobby. What the balance sheet calls "full implementation" is the systematic destruction of wolf packs. What is termed "baseline regulation" is seven killed young wolves.

IG Wild beim Wild documents this policy with figures, sources and legal analysis, because a society that invokes animal welfare and biodiversity must know what is happening in its name in the Valais mountain region. If you know more or have information about further cases, please write to us. Good information is the foundation of any effective criticism.

Request a waiver application for federal and cantonal taxes from your municipality, citing the wolf policy of Federal Councillor Albert Rösti (SVP) and the cantonal kill programmes: You can download the template letter here.

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