Valais Wolf Balance: Numbers of a Massacre

The canton of Valais calls it «proactive regulation». What the official balance sheet from September 1, 2025 to January 31, 2026 documents is something else: the systematic destruction of wolf packs, the systematic killing of young animals and a state-organized hunting machinery that turns hobby hunters into a support force for official culling programs. 24 wolves were killed during this period – including seven young wolves from three packs, shot as part of so-called «basic regulation» that explicitly permits the removal of two-thirds of the young animals born each year.

Behind these numbers are destroyed family units, killed individuals in complex social structures and a legal situation that is increasingly turning against Switzerland: In October 2024, the Bern Convention explicitly classified preventive culling without concrete damage as illegal. In December 2024, the standing committee of the Council of Europe unanimously opened an investigation procedure against Switzerland. Valais, meanwhile, continues to expand its bureaucratic culling apparatus. This dossier shows what the numbers mean, who makes the decisions, which legal questions remain open and what a credible wolf policy in the Alpine region should achieve instead.

What awaits you here

What the 2025/2026 balance sheet really shows: The concrete numbers, packs, culling perimeters and the goal to reduce 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 contrary to animal welfare, but biologically counterproductive.
Hobby hunters as state support force: How the Canton of Valais systematically merges recreational hunting and sovereign culling mandates.
The bureaucratic costs of the massacre: What 13,390 working hours and several full-time positions in Valais wolf management actually cost – and what for.
Darbellay and the wolf war: How a state councillor with recreational hunting background drives culling policy while displacing scientific and legal minimum standards.
Fabio Regazzi and the Swiss model as political fiction: Why the Swedish model praised as an example fails in court – and why this doesn't bother Regazzi.
Bern Convention: What the investigation procedure means: Legal assessment of the European procedure against Switzerland and what preventive culls have to do with international law.
What real coexistence in the Alpine region would mean: The political and structural measures that would be necessary – but are consistently avoided.
Argument collection: Answers to the most common justifications of culling policy.
Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers.

What the 2025/2026 balance sheet really shows

The Canton of Valais has applied to the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) for authorization to completely remove the Simplon and Chablais packs for the period 2025/2026 – and received it. Additionally, a 'basic regulation' was approved for three other packs (Réchy-Anniviers, Nendaz-Isérables, Posette-Trient), allowing the canton to kill two-thirds of young animals born this year. From September 1, 2025 to January 31, 2026, 24 wolves were actually killed: 3 through individual culling orders, 14 as part of complete pack removal, 7 young wolves as part of basic regulation.

Parallel to this, 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 clear: The number of packs in Valais should be reduced from eleven to three – to the legal minimum for the region. This is not 'management' in the scientific sense. It is a political decision for maximum reduction of a population – made by a state councillor who is himself a hobby hunter, and implemented with hobby hunters as the culling team.

For comparison: In the Canton of Graubünden, 35 wolves were killed in 2025. CHWOLF has documented the balance of the second regulation period nationally: 92 dead wolves – including the entire National Park pack. The official designation of these interventions as 'proactive regulation' conceals what they factually are: preventive elimination of wolf packs before concrete, severe and repeated damage has occurred – and 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 preferred targets: Ethics turned upside down

The 'basic regulation' – removal of up to two-thirds of young wolves in certain packs – is the most ethically problematic part of Valais 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 basic regulation was 'fully implemented'.

This is not only contrary to animal welfare – it is biologically counterproductive. Young wolves learn in their first years of life through observation of pack structure how territorial behavior, prey selection and avoidance of human infrastructure function. Experienced alpha wolves impart this knowledge. Those who kill young wolves before they have learned how their pack deals with livestock farming and cultural landscapes eliminate precisely those learning processes that could reduce conflicts long-term. Packs with disrupted age structure and lacking experienced individuals are demonstrably more conflict-prone – not less.

An ethics 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'. Those who call this 'regulation' conceal that here the foundation of all moral responsibility – protection of the most vulnerable – is deliberately ignored.

More on this: Hunting and Animal Welfare: What practice does to wild animals and Wild animals, mortal fear and lack of anesthesia

Hobby hunters as state support troops

The canton of Valais has explicitly integrated recreational hunting into the state shooting system. In the regulation period 2025/2026, hobby hunters with valid regulation permits may kill wolves in the defined shooting perimeters – in addition to professional game wardens for complete pack removal. Specific training for wolf regulation is conducted annually for all registered hobby hunters. Specialized hobby hunters are integrated into a 'Hunting Support Group (UGJ)' under the responsibility of the cantonal service for hunting, fishing and wildlife (DJFW).

This is an institutional fusion of hobby hunting interests and sovereign mandate that is unique in Switzerland in this consequence. The canton delegates state killing tasks to hobby hunters – and thereby grants state legitimation to a recreational activity that it neither justifies nor deserves. At the same time, it creates an infrastructure whose logic is exclusively focused on shooting: specially trained hobby hunters, generously sized shooting perimeters, politically set reduction targets. Those who work in this system will no longer question whether shootings are necessary – but only how many are possible.

Environmental advocates have precisely pointed out this mechanism: Through the intentional establishment of large shooting perimeters, Valais offers itself the possibility to kill a maximum number of wolves. This is not interpretation. This is the documented functioning of a system that has maximum killing as its goal and minimal protection as window dressing.

More on this: Hunters: Role, power, training and criticism and Psychology of hunting in the canton of Valais

The bureaucratic costs of the massacre

In 2025, according to official accounts, 13,390 working hours were invested in wolf management and wolf regulation in Valais – compared to 16,400 hours in 2024. In parallel, 3.2 full-time positions were created within the framework of the federal program agreement 2025–2028 to support the service. Calculating with conservative full costs of 60 to 80 francs per hour, this results in between 800,000 and well over one million francs in tax money for 2025 – for Valais wolf regulation alone. The shooting of a single wolf costs taxpayers in Switzerland an estimated 35,000 francs according to available estimates.

The administrative apparatus grows, regulation becomes professionalized. The crucial question is where these resources flow. The official balance sheet gives a clear answer: the focus is on dossiers, authorization procedures, and culling organization. Consistent livestock protection, structural agricultural consulting, long-term conflict prevention – these are tasks that appear in the balance sheet as rhetorical supplements, not as operational priorities. 'Coexistence' is the word filled each year with new culling numbers.

The canton does not transparently report these total costs in its balance sheet. This is not surprising in a canton that has stood for years under accusations of cronyism, nepotism, and lack of transparency – from construction scandals to flood protection failures to political mismanagement scandals. With wolves, governance is harsh and uncompromising, while fundamental questions about cost efficiency and effectiveness are not asked.

More on this: Hunting Laws and Control: Why Self-Supervision Is Not Enough and Hunting in Switzerland: Numbers, Systems and the End of a Narrative

Darbellay and the Wolf War

Christophe Darbellay has become the driving force of Valais wolf policy since taking office as head of the department responsible for hunting authorities. He is himself a recreational hunter and actively participates in hunts. Since taking office, he has made culling decision after culling decision – with the publicly stated goal: to reduce the number of wolf packs from eleven to three. Environmental advocates describe his approach as 'unscientific and counterproductive' and compare his rhetoric to a 'wolf war' in which he stages himself as defender of the mountain population, while facts about livestock protection, biology and legal situation 'disturb rather than guide.'

Darbellay presents himself as a Christian-influenced centrist politician. In practice, his department functions like an execution office for wolf populations: 27 dead wolves in the 2025/2026 regulation period, including seven young wolves, complete pack dissolutions, recreational hunters as state-trained culling teams. This stands in stark contrast to values like protection of life and preservation of creation, which he publicly invokes. The discrepancy between political self-presentation and actual action is documented and proven – and can best be 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 against mountain farmer, conservationists against 'realistic' politics, Brussels against Switzerland. This emotionalization has a political function: it creates a climate in which radical culling programs can appear as 'reasonable center,' even though they are factually neither necessary nor proportionate – and increasingly no longer legal. Our contribution Christophe Darbellay's Wolf War: Polemics Against the Facts documents these patterns in detail.

More on this: Christophe Darbellay's Wolf War: Polemics Against the Facts and Hunter Lobby in Switzerland: How Influence Functions

Fabio Regazzi and the Swedish Model as Political Fiction

Center Party Councillor of States Fabio Regazzi from Ticino has been promoting the Swedish wolf model for years as an example for Switzerland: license hunts, politically fixed population targets, fast and plannable reduction. The problem: the Swedish model has failed in court or been massively restricted – because Swedish and European courts have determined that license hunts on strictly protected species violate elementary rule-of-law requirements and species protection law.

Regazzi promises quick solutions and promotes a policy of quick fixes that pushes wildlife protection and rule of law to the margins. The reality of the model he cites as exemplary doesn't fit his communication – so he doesn't mention it. This is symptomatic of a wolf policy that relies on emotionalization because the facts work against it. Both Darbellay and Regazzi come from a party that publicly invokes Christian values – yet practice a wolf policy in which 'stewardship of creation' appears at most in Sunday speeches.

From the perspective of IG Wild beim Wild, both are exemplary figures of politically orchestrated wolf-baiting: They shift the discourse away from fact-based solutions toward an emotionally charged culture war in which the wolf becomes a projection surface for entirely different conflicts – mountain agriculture against nature conservation, cantonal sovereignty against international agreements, tradition against 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 Standing Committee of the Bern Convention established: Preventive culling – that is, killings without concrete, repeated and significant damage – is not covered by the Convention and therefore illegal. In December 2024, the Standing Committee unanimously opened an investigation dossier against Switzerland after complaints from CH-Wolf and Gruppe Wolf Schweiz were upheld. Switzerland had to report again at the meeting in spring 2025. The BAFU's presentation met with great skepticism among the participating countries.

What does this mean concretely? Switzerland, with the revised hunting ordinance (JSV) that came into force on February 1, 2025, has explicitly legalized preventive culling of entire packs under certain conditions – including cubs and young wolves as part of these packs. This legal basis is, according to the Bern Convention's assessment, not in compliance with the international treaty that Switzerland ratified in 1979. Valais is consistently implementing this legal basis in the 2025/2026 regulation period – during an ongoing investigation procedure that questions its legality. This contradiction is not a bureaucratic detail. It shows how far Swiss wolf policy has moved away from rule-of-law minimum standards.

Valais is also creating factual conditions with its culling program that make political reversals difficult: Those who dissolve packs cannot restore their structure. Those who kill young wolves destroy the learning capital of the population. The irreversible consequences of this policy will only become visible when the investigation procedure results in concrete measures – and then structures must be rebuilt that are being systematically destroyed today.

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

What would need to change

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

Livestock protection as structural priority, not as obligatory exercise: Consistent investments in livestock guardian dogs, night enclosures, fences and agricultural consulting – not as targeted funding, but as a permanent system component with binding standards.
Rethinking mountain agriculture policy: The question of which livestock farming forms are compatible with predators in steep mountain terrain must be addressed politically – with direct payments that promote adaptations instead of preventing them.
Protection of pack structures as conflict prevention measure: Experienced alpha wolves and intact social structures demonstrably reduce conflicts. Protecting them is not romanticism – it is biologically founded conflict prevention.
Shooting bans for juvenile animals: Defining young wolves as targets is contrary to animal welfare, biologically counterproductive and legally problematic under the Bern Convention. An immediate ban is the minimum requirement.
Independent wolf population monitoring without conflicts of interest: Monitoring and population estimates must be conducted by independent scientific institutions – without participation from hunting authorities or recreational hunting structures.
Establishing legal compliance with the Bern Convention: Preventive culling of entire packs must be removed from Swiss legal foundations – regardless of how the investigation procedure concludes.
Model motions: Template texts for hunting-critical motions and Template letter: Appeal for change in Switzerland

More on this: Livestock protection in Switzerland and Alternatives to hunting: What really helps without killing animals

Arguments

«318 killed livestock are unacceptable – wolves must be regulated.» 318 killed livestock are a real problem. The response to this determines whether coexistence is possible or not. Those who immediately demand culling after every attack, without asking whether livestock protection was adequate, whether grazing management can be adapted, and whether direct payments create wrong incentives, do not solve the problem. They shift it – at the expense of wolves and at the expense of taxpayers who finance the cullings.

«Proactive regulation prevents damage before it occurs.» This is exactly what the Bern Convention says is illegal. Preventive killing of wild animals without concrete, significant and repeated damage is not covered by international protection agreements that Switzerland has joined. What is marketed as 'proactive' is legally 'non-compliant' – and the unanimously decided investigation procedure by the Council of Europe is the consequence.

«Hobby hunters only support the authorities – this is not hunting.» Recreational hunters receive specific training for wolf culling, are integrated into state culling structures and kill wolves in state-defined perimeters. This is not support for an administrative task – this is the privatization of killing contracts to an interest group whose main interest is culling.

«Wolves threaten mountain populations and mountain agriculture.» Wolves kill livestock. They do not threaten humans – statistically zero attacks on humans in Switzerland. Mountain agriculture faces structural challenges related to direct payment systems, farm sizes and market conditions – which no wolf culling solves. Those who make wolves the cause of structural problems they did not cause are conducting politics with the wrong scapegoat.

«This is legal implementation of the revised hunting ordinance.» Yes – and this very revised hunting ordinance is the object of an ongoing investigation procedure by the Council of Europe for non-compliance with the Bern Convention. Legal under Swiss law and compliant with international nature conservation agreements are two different standards. Switzerland is currently violating the second according to the Council of Europe's assessment.

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Our Standards

The Valais Wolf Balance Sheet 2025/2026 documents a system that systematically subordinates animal welfare, wildlife biology and international legal standards – in favor of a culling logic driven by hobby hunting interests and livestock lobby. What the balance sheet calls 'complete implementation' is the systematic destruction of wolf packs. What is called 'basic regulation' is seven killed young wolves.

IG Wild beim Wild documents this policy with numbers, sources and legal classification – because a society that claims to support animal welfare and biodiversity must know what is being done in its name in the Valais mountain region. Anyone who knows more or has information about additional cases should write to us. Good information is the foundation of any effective criticism.

Demand from your municipality a tax exemption request for federal and cantonal taxes based on the wolf policy of Federal Councillor Albert Rösti (SVP) and the cantonal culling programs: The template letter can be downloaded here.

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