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Wildlife

First wolf pack documented in the canton of Schwyz

Additional wolf pups have been detected in the Wägital, near the Chöpfenberg (Chöpfler).

Editorial Wild beim Wild — 25 July 2025

On 22 July 2025, the canton of Schwyz announced that two wolf pups had been confirmed, marking the first time a wolf pack has been established in the canton of Schwyz.

On Thursday, 24 July 2025, further significant reports from the public reached the Office for Forest and Nature: a camera trap had captured images of five wolf pups. This observation was confirmed as accurate.

The canton of Schwyz had initially issued a shooting permit for a lone wolf. When indications of a wolf pack emerged, it suspended the permit. Interventions in packs are only permitted under specific conditions and with the approval of the Federal Office for the Environment.

Ongoing monitoring in the area is intended to provide more precise information on the number of pups, the territory, and the behavior of the pack. As the pack's territory extends beyond cantonal borders, monitoring is being carried out in close cooperation with the canton of Glarus. The two cantons are in regular contact in order to document the pack's size, range, and behavior as accurately as possible, the canton states.

An application for population management is being prepared in coordination with the canton of Glarus and will be submitted at an appropriate time within wolf compartment III (Central Switzerland) to the Federal Office for the Environment, in order to enable a proactive massacre during the hunt.

Reports from the public should not be directed to the responsible game wardens or the police.

Further articles

More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. What the research says about this is shown by Hunting fact-checked: the state of research.

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.

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