Germany: Fox Weeks not compliant with animal welfare standards
Hunting associations call for “Fox Weeks” to kill as many foxes as possible. This is not compliant with animal welfare standards and is ecologically pointless.
Fox Weeks: Killing as many foxes as possible
Many hunting associations call for the so-called Fox Week in February. The aim is to kill as many foxes as possible within a few days and to present them on the hunting bag celebrated with sausages and alcohol.
In February, recreational hunting for foxes is considerably easier than during the summer months. The male foxes are still searching for a suitable mate: it is mating season. Recreational hunting fails as population control.
Not compliant with animal welfare standards
Fox hunting in February is considered to be in accordance with hunting tradition, but that is far from meaning it is also compliant with animal welfare standards. Most female foxes are already pregnant at this time. Tens of thousands of males are affected, who can no longer fulfil their role as the primary providers for the young fox families.
Many recreational hunters are, as is well known, poor marksmen. An English study documents that for every fox killed, one fox is injured. The blanket claim that, within the framework of unrestricted hunting, one is helping the nearly extinct grey partridge or brown hare is unlikely to hold true, writes Wildtierschutz Deutschland. More on the topic of animal welfare problems of recreational hunting.
Dossiers: Fox in Switzerland: Most hunted predator without a lobby | Fox hunting without facts: How JagdSchweiz invents problems
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More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier The Role and Criticism of Recreational Hunters we shed light on the training, power and self-image of recreational hunters. 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.
