Federal Council: Report on the Management of Bears in Switzerland
The Federal Council adopts the implementation guide «Bear Concept Switzerland». It complies with pan-European guidelines and has proven its worth.
The implementation guide «Bear Concept Switzerland» complies with pan-European guidelines and has proven its worth.
Federal Council evaluates bear management
These are the key findings of the report «Management of Bears in Switzerland», adopted by the Federal Council on 27 January 2021. In total, around twenty different bears are estimated to have visited our country over the past 15 years.
The current «Bear Concept Switzerland» provides sufficient room for manoeuvre to handle bears entering the country appropriately. There is, however, potential for improvement in damage prevention. The better beehives and livestock are protected, the lower the risk that bears will develop problematic behaviour.
CHF 120,000 in damage compensation over 15 years
To protect people, a bear had to be culled in 2008 and again in 2013. Damage compensation over the past 15 years amounts to around CHF 120,000 for livestock kills and CHF 30,000 for damaged beehives.
The bear has been protected since 1962 under the Federal Act on Hunting . An active reintroduction of bears is not planned in Switzerland.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
