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Hunting

Graubünden: The Ugliest Hunt in the World

In Graubünden, the special hunt for deer, chamois, wild boar and roe deer is beginning. Wildlife is being decimated rather than regulated, and birth rates are being stimulated.

Editorial Wild beim Wild — 25 November 2023

Special hunt for deer, chamois and roe deer

For hobby hunters, the animal-cruel special hunt for deer, chamois, wild boar and roe deer begins on Saturday, 25.11.2023, in Graubünden.

Wildlife has not been genuinely regulated for decades, but rather decimated, with birth rates being stimulated in turn. A consequence of current methods is that roe deer and red deer, for instance, have become even more timid and have shifted their daytime activities entirely into the night. This diminishes the protective function of forests and provokes damage to agricultural crops.

Wildlife browsing damage is caused primarily by hobby hunting. Hunting does not mean less wildlife, but more births. The regulation of wildlife populations is not achieved through hobby hunting. Hobby hunting is most often the cause of the alleged problems.

Barbaric massacre of wildlife

It is now known that in Graubünden and elsewhere, the primary concern is, much like a travel agency, the organisation of attractive hunts, planned by the Office for Hunting and Nonsense in Graubünden.

The special hunt is always also an unethical and barbaric massacre of wildlife. Pregnant and nursing hinds, as well as roe does and their young, entire social structures are shot down without mercy — even in the snow — as if in a bloodlust frenzy. Shooting nursing mother animals away from their young is shabby and contemptible. One cannot truly speak of craftsmanship, wildlife biology or science here — it is simply hobby hunting, which is animal cruelty.

The national park proves it: it works without hobby hunting

In the Swiss National Park in the Engadin, hunting has not taken place for 100 years, and there, for example, the chamois population has remained constant at around 1’350 animals since 1920. The fox is also not hunted. Contrary to predictions from hobby hunter circles, none of its prey animals have gone extinct. The shift from pasture for cows and sheep to deer grazing land led to a completely new species composition of the vegetation and a doubling of the biodiversity!

A simple and cost-effective option in modern wildlife biology is immunocontraception, to sustainably regulate animal populations when needed. Immunocontraception is used today by animal welfare advocates to regulate populations in the wild or in zoos.

More on the topic of hobby hunting: In our dossier on hunting we compile fact checks, analyses and background reports.

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