Fox Hunting: Bernese Government Refuses to Examine the Evidence

The motion was submitted on 3 December 2025 by GLP cantonal councillor Casimir von Arx, co-sponsored by representatives from the SP, SVP, Greens, EVP and FDP.

What was demanded was a time-limited, scientifically supervised field trial: in a suitable area, it would be examined how a full or partial cessation of red fox hunting affects the fox population, wildlife health, public health, biodiversity and agriculture.

The occasion is considerable. In Switzerland, according to federal hunting statistics, between 15,000 and 25,000 red foxes are usually shot each year; in the canton of Bern the figure is between 2,000 and 3,500 animals. As the «Berner Zeitung» reported at the end of October 2025, the greater part of the roughly 3,000 Bernese foxes killed subsequently ends up as waste.

The driving force behind the initiative is the lawyer Pascal Wolf, who has launched similar motions in more than twelve cantons, focusing mainly on questioning the scientific necessity of fox hunting. Authorities have so far often rejected these, most recently the responsible Lucerne commission, whose approach wildbeimwild.com has critically traced. Wolf's commitment and the technical background are likewise documented in detail.

The cantonal government's reasoning

By decision of 6 May 2026, the cantonal government recommends rejection. Its reasoning is not based on data, but on the systematics of hunting law: under the federal hunting act, the red fox is a huntable wild animal species, its population is widespread throughout the entire canton and in no way threatened. Restrictions on hunting could primarily be justified by species protection, which does not apply here. There is therefore no need to scientifically investigate the effect of foregoing fox hunting.

A remarkable passage is one formulated by the cantonal government itself: since non-threatened species may be used by hobby hunting, hobby hunting is «de facto an end in itself» and need not fulfil any explicit regulatory mandate. With this, the government confirms precisely the point that hobby hunting usually disputes in public.

The core contradiction

This is exactly where the weakness of the response lies. The motion did not ask whether the fox is threatened, but whether hunting it actually fulfils the purposes attributed to it. The cantonal government leaves this question unanswered. The first signatory, von Arx, also publicly criticises on Radio BeO that the government sidesteps the actual concern of the motion.

The scientific starting point is by no means open. Rabies was eradicated in Switzerland with vaccine baits, not with the rifle. The fox tapeworm can be effectively reduced with deworming baits, while hunting is considered unsuitable for this purpose. Fox populations remain stable even under strong hunting pressure, because immigration and higher reproduction quickly offset losses. Research mostly attributes the decline of rare species to habitat loss and intensive agriculture, not to the predator fox. wildbeimwild.com has summarised the state of research on evidence-based fox management.

A look across the cantonal border shows that abstaining is practicable. In the canton of Geneva, hunting by private individuals has been banned since 1974, with only up to twenty special official kills carried out annually. Luxembourg has protected the fox year-round since 2015. There are also hunting-free areas within Switzerland: in the Swiss National Park all hunting has been prohibited since its founding in 1914, where the fox, like all other species, is fully protected, and numerous other national parks in Europe handle it the same way. A population explosion, increased epidemics or excessive damage have not occurred in any of these cases. The frequently heard argument that the Geneva model cannot be transferred therefore does not withstand scrutiny. More on this in the dossier on the self-regulation of wild populations and in the article about the cruelty involved in fox hunting.

When hunting promotes diseases

The discrepancy becomes particularly clear with the health argument made for hobby hunting. Rabies was eradicated in Switzerland with vaccine baits, not with the rifle. In the case of the fox tapeworm, a four-year study in the Nancy region shows the opposite of what was expected: despite massively intensified nocturnal hunting across some 700 square kilometres, in which the bag rose by 35 per cent, the fox population did not shrink. The parasite infestation rate in the test area climbed from 40 to 55 per cent, while it remained stable in the comparison area. The study bears the telling title “An inappropriate paradigm”. Deworming baits, by contrast, are regarded as effective; in the Bavarian district of Starnberg they reduced the infection risk by 97 to 99 per cent.

In the case of ticks, too, the evidence speaks against killing. In areas with high activity of predators such as fox and stone marten, rodents carry significantly fewer ticks, and these are less often infected. Anyone who decimates the mouse-hunting fox thereby tends to increase the risk of Lyme disease and tick-borne encephalitis, whose case numbers in Switzerland recently reached record highs. wildbeimwild.com has shown how hobby hunters spread diseases and why hobby hunting even promotes diseases.

The issue is highly explosive, because Switzerland is a European hotspot for the fox tapeworm. A review published in 2025 in “The Lancet Infectious Diseases” counted 4’207 cases of alveolar echinococcosis across Europe for the years 1997 to 2023, around 68 per cent of them in Germany, France, Austria and Switzerland. On a per capita basis, Switzerland ranks second after Lithuania. To rely, of all things in this situation, on a demonstrably counterproductive hunting approach rather than on deworming is hard to justify in terms of health policy.

Licence canton without territorial obligation

Important for context: Bern is one of sixteen licence hunting cantons. Anyone who takes out a licence may hunt throughout the entire cantonal territory without bearing responsibility for a particular hunting ground. The notion that hobby hunters fulfil a comprehensive management task by killing foxes cannot be derived from this system.

How things proceed

With the rejection by the cantonal government, the matter is not yet settled. The motion will now be decided by the Grand Council, expected in the autumn 2026 session. The cross-party sponsorship shows that support for a fact-based review of fox hunting is growing even outside traditional animal welfare circles.

Sources

• Canton of Bern, cantonal government: RRB 446/2026 of 6 May 2026, response to Motion 351-2025 «Trialling the suspension of fox hunting» (file no. 2025.GRPARL.1535)
• Federal Act on Hunting and the Protection of Wild Mammals and Birds (JSG, SR 922.0), Arts. 1, 3 and 5
• Federal hunting statistics: https://www.jagdstatistik.ch
• Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), rabies: https://www.bag.admin.ch/de/tollwut
• Berner Zeitung: «Controversial fox hunting: most of the 3,000 animals shot end up as waste», 30.10.2025
• Baker P. J. et al. (2002): Effect of British hunting ban on fox numbers
• Kämmerle J.-L. et al. (2019): Restricted-area culls and red fox abundance
• König A. et al. (2019): Effective long-term control of Echinococcus multilocularis
• Comte S. et al. (2017): «Echinococcus multilocularis management by fox culling: an inappropriate paradigm» (Nancy area, France)
• Hofmeester T. R. et al. (2017): Cascading effects of predator activity on tick-borne disease risk, Proceedings of the Royal Society B
• The Lancet Infectious Diseases (2025): Europe-wide overview of alveolar echinococcosis (Medical University of Vienna and others)
• Deworming bait, Starnberg district (Bavaria): reduction of infection risk by 97 to 99 per cent
• Radio BeO: «Grand Council to decide on fox hunting trial», 18.5.2026