Recreational hunters have no place in hunting reserves

Valais State Council and FOEN overruled on recreational hunting in the Aletsch Forest.

Editorial Team Wild beim Wild · 6 January 2021

The Federal Court has upheld a complaint by the nature conservation organisation Pro Natura against the hunting of red deer in the Aletsch Forest hunting reserve in Valais.

Federal Court rules in favour of Pro Natura

The State Council opened a sub-area of the hunting reserve to general red deer hunting in 2018. The Federal Court concluded in a published ruling that recreational hunting in the Aletsch Forest hunting reserve is prohibited under the applicable legal provisions.

Recreational hunting is not the same as culling

The law uses the term “culling” in such cases, which is not to be equated with recreational hunting. According to the Federal Court, opening the hunting reserve to recreational hunting for licence holders is out of the question!

In this regard, the Federal Court states that due account must be taken of the conservation objectives and the significance of the Aletsch Forest, with its stands of arolla pines several hundred years old, as well as of highly endangered and disturbance-sensitive birds such as the black grouse.

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.