Fox Hunting without Facts: JagdSchweiz Invents Problems

On 20 November 2025, the militant association JagdSchweiz published a position paper full of hatred regarding fox hunting.

The tenor is clear: fox hunting is «sensible and useful» and must «absolutely be maintained». Criticism from nature and animal welfare organisations is dismissed as emotional and lacking in facts.

However, anyone who takes a look at the actual developments in regions free of fox hunting, at court rulings and at the official figures on hunting practice quickly realises: the paper primarily defends a hunters' self-image and a bloody hobby that is barely compatible with modern wildlife ecology and animal welfare any more.

JagdSchweiz is defending a system that has long been on the back foot

In its position paper, JagdSchweiz responds to the «discussion repeatedly raised by nature and animal welfare circles» about the purpose and future of fox hunting. The organisation maintains that recreational hunting of foxes is necessary to regulate populations, prevent damage, combat disease and protect other wild animal species. The fox is indirectly built up into a problem figure that would get out of control without shot and rifle.

What is striking is what is missing: a sober scientific evaluation of the experiences in regions where fox hunting has not taken place for years or decades, as well as an honest examination of the massive failures of their own clientele. It is precisely this reality that we catch up on below.

Hobby-Jäger Franz Balmer über die sinnlose Fuchsjagd

Luxembourg: fox hunting banned, problems failed to materialise

At the beginning of 2015, Luxembourg completely stopped recreational fox hunting. Hunting associations predicted at the time a «population explosion», growing risk of disease and increasing damage. None of this has materialised.

Evaluations by the Luxembourg authorities and independent reports show:

• The fox population has not exploded since the ban, but has remained largely stable.
• There has been no increase in wild animal diseases.
• The proportion of animals infected with fox tapeworm roughly halved between 2014 and 2020.

In other words: a country in the heart of Europe has completely abstained from fox hunting for years, and in practice disproves the alarmist rhetoric that hunting associations use to legitimise their fox campaigns.

Canton of Geneva: Fifty years of wildlife policy without recreational hunting

The reality check is even clearer in Switzerland itself. In the canton of Geneva, militia hunting was abolished by popular vote in 1974. Recreational hunting has been banned ever since, and wildlife management lies with state game wardens.

Geneva is now considered an example of modern wildlife management:

• Wildlife populations are regulated in a targeted and sparing manner by professional game wardens when this is necessary for agriculture, traffic or safety.
• Studies and field reports from the canton show that wildlife populations regulate themselves better without recreational hunting, or can be managed with minimal intervention.

Despite abstaining from blanket fox hunting, neither ecological catastrophes nor epidemic-like disease outbreaks are known to have occurred. On the contrary, the Geneva model is now being discussed in other cantons as a forward-looking alternative to traditional recreational hunting.

National parks and fox-hunting-free areas: the doomsday scenario remains theoretical

Besides Luxembourg and Geneva, there are other areas in Europe where foxes have not been hunted, or have been hunted only minimally, for years, including national parks such as the Bavarian Forest and Berchtesgaden, as well as larger hunting grounds free of fox hunting.

The findings from these areas can be summarised as follows:

• There are no documented «fox explosions» followed by collapses of ground-nesting bird or hare populations.
• Fox density adapts to the natural and man-made conditions.
• Where humans do not intervene with a shotgun, food availability, disease and competition among foxes regulate the populations.

This leaves JagdSchweiz facing an obvious contradiction: while yet another utterly incompetent position paper paints dramatic scenarios, real field studies show the opposite. Zones free of fox hunting are not ecological problem areas, but are often biodiversity hotspots.

The culture of violence in recreational hunting on trial

A case before the criminal court in Bellinzona shows how the hunting milieu surrounding JagdSchweiz operates. The association had sued IG Wild beim Wild, claiming that sharp criticism had damaged its honour.

At the heart of the case were statements describing JagdSchweiz, among other things, as a «militant problem association», accused of a culture of violence, disrespect towards wild animals, and massive political pressure through intimidation and propaganda of lies.

After taking evidence, Judge Siro Quadri concluded that these statements did not constitute lies and therefore were not defamatory in nature. The lawsuit was dismissed, and the judgment is legally binding.

Legally, this means: even drastic phrases about a «militant hunting milieu» and a «culture of violence» were regarded by the criminal court as covered by freedom of expression and, at their core, supported by the facts and contexts presented. This casts a clear light on the environment in which the current position paper was created.

The Ticino Criminal Court ruled, in proceedings between JagdSchweiz and IG Wild beim Wild, that sharp judgements such as the criticism of a ‚culture of violence‘ within the JagdSchweiz environment are covered by the protection of freedom of expression. Legally, this means: the court did not regard these drastic formulations as punishable defamation, but as permissible value judgements supported by the facts presented.

Erfolg: Verband Jagd Schweiz verliert

Grisons: Official figures on hunting practice expose the idealised image

The gap between hunting's self-image and reality becomes even clearer when looking at the canton of Grisons. There, the high hunts are gladly portrayed as a prime example of responsible regulation. The official figures tell a different story.

According to the Grisons Office for Hunting and Fishing and SRF reporting, the following applies:

• During the high hunt in the canton of Grisons, around 10’000 red deer, chamois, roe deer and wild boars are shot every year.
• Around nine to just under ten percent of these kills are unlawful. In the five years before 2016 alone, recreational hunters paid fines totalling over CHF 700’000 for incorrect kills.

Particularly serious are the figures on wounded animals:

• Between 2012 and 2016, 56’403 red deer, roe deer, chamois and wild boars were killed in Grisons.
• In 3’836 cases, animals were merely wounded by gunshot. These figures come from official data on the so-called blood-tracking dog system, which were disclosed to the SRF programme «Rundschau» were disclosed.

IG Wild beim Wild and other animal welfare organisations have gathered and analysed this data. It shows that these are not isolated cases but a structural problem: hundreds of unlawful kills per year in a single canton, plus thousands of animals injured within just a few years.

Extrapolated to all hunting cantons and over longer periods, this amounts to tens of thousands of animals that are either illegally killed or killed in ways that violate animal welfare standards. Against this backdrop, the image of the disciplined, law-abiding recreational hunter committed to animal welfare that JagdSchweiz presents to the public looks more like a promotional brochure than a realistic description.

Fox hunting as a scapegoat for failures in agricultural policy

A central motif of hunting rhetoric is that foxes decimate ground-nesting birds and brown hares in the agricultural landscape to such an extent that only intensive recreational hunting of predators can protect these species.

Developments in Luxembourg, Geneva and national parks free of fox hunting suggest otherwise: the main problem lies not with the fox but in the fields. Expert publications and official reports repeatedly point to:

• habitat destruction through land consolidation, drainage and the loss of hedgerows and fallow land
• the massive use of pesticides and fertilisers, which destroys insects and thus the food base
• early and frequent mowing with heavy machinery, which directly kills clutches and young animals.

Luxembourg's environmental policy, for example, explicitly attributes the decline of various farmland bird species to these factors, not to foxes. Where meadows are mown later and more gently, pesticides are reduced and refuge areas are created, populations recover – without any fox hunting at all.

Turning foxes into scapegoats for the consequences of misguided agricultural policy may be politically convenient. From a scientific standpoint, it is a diversionary tactic.

Disease: a triumph of medicine, not of the rifle

Another standard argument of the hunting associations is disease control. The fox serves as the bogeyman for rabies, fox tapeworm and other zoonoses.

The history of rabies control in Europe, however, clearly shows that the breakthrough came through widespread oral vaccination programmes, not through recreational hunting. In Switzerland and its neighbouring countries, millions of vaccine baits were distributed, after which fox rabies disappeared within just a few years.

The same applies to fox tapeworm: what matters most is hygiene, education, and, where necessary, targeted deworming bait in hotspots. Despite a fox hunting ban, Luxembourg has no elevated risk situation — on the contrary, the proportion of infected foxes has declined.

Disease prevention is therefore no blank cheque for the general, permanent persecution of the fox.

What a modern wildlife policy would really need

Instead of clinging to poorly justified fox hunting, Switzerland could take its cue from models that are already working. A contemporary wildlife management approach would focus on three priorities:

1. Waste and feeding policy in settlements
   Secure waste systems, clear feeding bans and educational campaigns would effectively and humanely limit fox densities in cities. Foxes follow the food supply, not the moralising rhetoric of recreational hunting associations.
2. Habitat instead of lead for endangered species
   Mowing meadows later, reducing pesticides, promoting small-scale habitat structures, and creating refuge zones: these measures demonstrably help ground-nesting birds and brown hares far more than a blanket declaration of the fox as an enemy.
3. Targeted, professional intervention instead of recreational hunting
   Where genuinely documented, serious damage occurs, state game wardens can intervene selectively with clear mandates and monitoring. The Geneva model has shown for five decades that this works. Long-term studies by the canton show that biodiversity increased strongly after recreational hunting was abolished in 1974. Geneva also has the highest brown hare density in Switzerland.

A position paper from the past

JagdSchweiz's position paper on fox hunting wants to create the impression that it speaks in the name of reason and facts. Reality paints a different picture:

• Countries and cantons without fox hunting manage perfectly well without the problems that were prophesied.
• National parks and fox-hunting-free areas disprove the scare scenario of population collapses and epidemics.
• A legally binding verdict in Bellinzona confirms that criticism of a culture of violence surrounding JagdSchweiz cannot be regarded as defamation.
• Official figures from Grisons document hundreds of unlawful kills and thousands of wounded animals every year in just one canton.

Against this backdrop, fox hunting does not appear to be an indispensable tool of modern wildlife policy, but rather a relic from an era in which the rifle was regarded as an all-purpose tool against problems of humanity's own making.

Anyone seriously interested in species and animal welfare protection will not take their cues from JagdSchweiz, but rather from Luxembourg, Geneva and other regions where it has been shown that nature functions without recreational hunting – and in fact works better.

The Swiss Animal Welfare Act makes clear that its purpose is to protect the dignity and wellbeing of animals, and the Civil Code states that animals are not objects. An argument that justifies fox hunting primarily on the grounds of economic attractiveness and utilisation effectively reduces the fox back to a commodity and contradicts the spirit of animal welfare law. Where, in this paper, is the respect for animal dignity that goes beyond the interests of the hunting lobby?

• Federal hunting statistics Link
• Scientific literature: Studies on the red fox
• Hunters spreading diseases: study
• Hunting promotes disease: study
• Recreational hunters in crime: The list
• A ban on senseless fox hunting is overdue: Article
• Luxembourg extends fox hunting ban: Article
• Low hunting and wildlife diseases: Article
• Deterrence of wild animals: Article