Drone War Against Birds: Scapegoat Instead of Solution
On Lake Constance and along the High Rhine, the same question has been burning for years: Is the cormorant to blame for the problems facing the fishing industry, and must even more birds therefore be shot?
The Schaffhauser Nachrichten now reports that the hunt for the cormorant in the region cannot be expanded further.
The legal options for reducing bird numbers have been exhausted, the Thurgau Cantonal Government states in its response to a parliamentary motion. Future measures would need to be internationally coordinated, ecologically justifiable, and soundly grounded in law.
At first glance, this sounds like a setback for those circles calling for ever new shooting quotas. In reality, however, this response above all reveals one thing: the hunt for the cormorant is not only ethically questionable from an animal welfare perspective — it is also technically ineffective. Shooting has been going on for years without the alleged problems being resolved.
A Bird in the Pillory
The cormorant was nearly wiped out in Europe through persecution and habitat destruction, and is therefore protected under international law. In Switzerland, it is nevertheless huntable in winter. Between 2010 and 2019, according to the Swiss Ornithological Institute, an average of around 1’500 cormorants per year were killed, including so-called special culls.
Particularly troubling is the fact that culls have not even stopped at the boundaries of protected areas. In the internationally significant waterfowl reserve of Ermatinger Becken on the Untersee, cormorants were shot under special permits, justified by an alleged threat to the grayling population. Only an appeal by BirdLife Switzerland and a ruling by the Thurgau Administrative Court halted this practice, as the claimed damage could not be substantiated.
The pattern is always the same: the hunting lobby and parts of the fishing industry create powerful images of the supposed fish predator, authorities grant special permits, and nature conservation organizations are forced to seek emergency injunctions in court. It is self-evident that this is not about serious wildlife management, but about symbolic politics at the expense of a protected bird.
The numbers tell a different story
While politicians debate ever new interventions, monitoring at Lake Constance reveals a very different trend. The Ornithological Working Group Lake Constance (Ornithologische Arbeitsgemeinschaft Bodensee) reports that the number of breeding cormorants fell by more than a quarter between 2023 and 2025, from 1’594 to 1’150 breeding pairs. The populations of overwintering birds have also stopped growing in recent years.
The reason for this is not hunting, but the condition of the lake. Experts see a clear connection with the decline in fish stocks. The surprising disappearance of sticklebacks in particular is cited as the reason why fewer cormorants are able to survive at Lake Constance.
In other words: the cormorant responds to the state of fish stocks — it does not cause it. Anyone who continues to rely on culling in this situation is treating symptoms, not causes.
Culling without effect
This has also been made clear by an expert from the Ornithological Working Group Lake Constance. Around 800 cormorants have been shot around the lake every year for years, yet these culls have had no demonstrable effect on the populations, explained OAB board member Gernot Segelbacher in the context of discussions about new drone-based interventions.
The Swiss Ornithological Institute reaches a similar conclusion. It shows that the catch of professional fishermen correlates positively with the number of cormorants. Where there are many fish, there are also many users. While this intensifies the sense of competition, it is not evidence that the bird is causing stock collapses. Furthermore, many winter visitors come from populations in the North Sea and Baltic Sea. Culling in Switzerland therefore has little influence on breeding colonies.
This raises an uncomfortable question: if thousands of birds have been killed in recent years without any fundamental improvement in the situation at the lake, what exactly justifies a further escalation of recreational hunting?
High tech instead of root cause analysis
Because recreational hunting alone is clearly ineffective, a comprehensive cormorant management program is now being developed at Lake Constance. From 2026 onwards, drones are to be deployed to spray eggs in treetop nests with oil. Eggs treated in this way cease to develop, causing breeding success to collapse. This project is part of a program run by the International Lake Constance Conference until 2028 and envisages, in addition to drones, further measures including culling.
What sounds technically spectacular is, from an animal welfare perspective, simply problematic. Cormorant colonies are not home to cormorants alone. Experts are already warning of massive disturbances to other nesting bird species and of collateral damage in protected areas.
When the Thurgau cantonal government now emphasizes that future steps must be ecologically justifiable and legally grounded, the question again arises: how compatible is a drone war against birds with the conservation mandate for international water and migratory bird reserves at Lake Constance and the High Rhine?
The true patient is Lake Constance
While recreational hunting and high-tech measures make headlines, the actual patient often goes unmentioned. Lake Constance itself is under pressure. Technical reports from the International Commission for the Protection of Lake Constance emphasize the central importance of riparian zones, spawning habitats, and ecological protection zones around the lake, and document the influence of nutrient balance, water body development, and climate change on fish fauna.
When whitefish, grayling, and other species struggle, it is due to a combination of stress factors:
- Warming of the water and altered mixing layers
- Development and destruction of shallow water zones and spawning grounds
- Inputs from agriculture and settlements
- Fishing pressure and inadequate management models
The cormorant appears in this list at most as an additional user of the same resource, not as the primary cause of the problem. Making it a scapegoat diverts attention from the difficult but necessary reforms in fisheries, agriculture, and spatial planning.
Hunting policy at the expense of credibility
Against this backdrop, cormorant hunting at Lake Constance and along the Rhine appears as a classic example of a hunting policy that serves emotions but fails to solve problems.
- It contradicts the conservation principles underpinning international water and migratory bird reserves.
- It ignores scientific findings that culling has little effect on populations and even less on fish yields.
- It creates an image of the bird as an enemy that does not do justice to the complexity of ecological relationships.
For animal welfare, the situation is doubly precarious. On one hand, highly specialized waterbirds are being shot at even within protected areas. On the other hand, with every additional exemption request and every new permit granted, respect for statutory species protection continues to erode. When guns are reached for at any time under pressure from lobby groups in places where birds should actually be safe, the protection regime loses its credibility.
What needs to be done now
The Thurgau cantonal government's response that the legal options for additional culling have been exhausted is an important moment. It shows: there are limits. Instead of circumventing these limits with ever new tricks, policymakers and authorities should seize the opportunity to correct course.
Concretely, this means:
- No further expansion of recreational hunting of cormorants in the region, neither temporally nor spatially.
- Consistent protection of water and migratory bird reserves, including the Ermatingen Basin. Special permits must remain the absolute exception and be strictly grounded in scientific evidence.
- Cause-oriented fisheries and environmental policy with a focus on habitat quality, climate adaptation, spawning grounds, and sustainable management instead of scapegoating strategies.
- A transparent data basis on fish stocks, cormorant numbers, culling figures, and any damages, accessible to the public and to researchers.
The message from Thurgau that cormorant hunting on Lake Constance and the Rhine cannot be expanded further is not a scandal, but long overdue. It compels all parties involved to move away from simplistic enemy images and to direct their attention to the actual core of the problem: the condition of the lake and humanity's relationship with it.
The cormorant is not the adversary of fisheries, but an indicator of the true state of the ecosystem. Shooting it because we do not want to do the necessary ecological homework is neither fair nor effective, neither legally sound nor ethically justifiable.
Anyone who is serious about nature and animal protection at Lake Constance and the Rhine should therefore not be calling for the next bullet, but for better habitats, smarter fisheries management, and policies guided by scientific knowledge rather than the noise level of the hunting lobby.
