Hobby Hunters: A Bottomless Well of Criminal Energy

The IG Wild beim Wild presents a plain-language summary of the hunting misconduct that has taken place over recent weeks in German-speaking Switzerland.

In February 2015, the Grand Council of Grisons declared the special hunting initiative invalid. During the parliamentary debate, however, key information had been withheld from the Council. Cantonal Councillor Mario Cavigelli (CVP) had not disclosed that the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) in Bern had determined that the initiative did NOT violate higher-level law. This had only recently become public knowledge.

The special hunting season is a problem for the population of Grisons because it leads to unspeakable barbarity and animal cruelty. On this matter, a second, more principled popular initiative by animal welfare advocates is also under way. However, this initiative too is being sabotaged in an unconscionable manner by the same circles, with the aim of preventing a public vote from taking place.

Cantonal Councillor Mario Cavigelli had known since 5 January 2015 — from a letter issued by the FOEN, and therefore prior to the Grand Council’s consideration of the initiative during the February 2015 session — that the initiative did not contravene federal law.He deliberately misled the 120 Grand Councillors and the entire population of Grisons,writes the initiative committee.

And, in an email from Mario Cavigelli to the FOEN dated 19 December 2014, it states: "I assume that BAFU, after carefully reviewing the cantonal government's report and the two corresponding legal opinions, will be able to align itself with the government's position. Otherwise, an exchange of views between BAFU and the Canton of Graubünden must take place before the Special Hunting Initiative is debated at the cantonal parliament's February 2015 session. It is particularly important to prevent BAFU and the canton from communicating differing views on the validity of the Special Hunting Initiative."

«I should have submitted the letter from the Grand Council's committee«, Cavigelli now apologizes under pressure during the parliament's question hour at the December 2017 session, in response to a motion by SVP Grand Councillor Jan Koch. Mario Cavigelli was facing the threat of an embarrassing Parliamentary Investigation Committee (PUK).

Had BAFU decided in line with Cavigelli and his department head, this BAFU report would certainly have been immediately circulated across all media outlets and would not have disappeared into his desk drawer.

BAFU also notes: that the natural regeneration of forests can in principle never be achieved solely through "adequate hunting."

The Federal Supreme Court also ruled 5:0 at the beginning of the month that the recreational hunters' first Special Hunting Initiative is valid and must therefore be put to a public vote. Cavigelli opposed this in his customarily arrogant «birds-of-a-feather recreational hunter mentality» — also without success. He subsequently described the Federal Court judges in Lausanne in a television interview as essentially unqualified bureaucratic armchair judges.

Furthermore, two legal opinions have already pointed out that the Special Hunting Initiative does not stand in "obvious" contradiction to federal law.

IG Wild beim Wild has filed a criminal complaint in order to address the backroom dealings through legal channels.

Meanwhile in Valais

In March 2016, a heavily decomposed animal carcass was found on the banks of the Rhône on the territory of the municipality of Raron. It was a wolf (Wild beim Wild reported).

As subsequent investigations revealed, the wild animal had been shot.

The public prosecutor's office of the Canton of Valais subsequently opened an investigation, which has since been concluded.

Based on its findings, it has now filed charges before the District Court of Brig against a person residing in the region, as announced on 7 December 2017. The individual in question is H. S. (68) from Ried-Brig VS.

For the first time, an alleged wolf poacher in Switzerland must now answer for his actions in court.

Police tracked him down through an anonymous telephone tip. The subsequent house search led investigators to the evidence that has now resulted in criminal charges.

According to the indictment filed by the Upper Valais public prosecutor's office, the defendant is described as an “extremely passionate and highly experienced hobby hunter” who has obtained a hunting licence in Valais a total of 32 times. In addition to a bait site and a hunting cabin, the man possessed hunting equipment that was far above average in both scope and quality.

Besides various hunting weapons and accessories, he also used equipment for night hunting, including night-vision devices, a laser targeting device, automatic motion sensors, and several infrared cameras with integrated SIM cards. He is said to have pursued hunting with such great passion “that during the Valais hunting season he barely slept at night.”

This led to the man illegally killing animals on multiple occasions at night in recent years. In doing so, he also used so-called “poacher's weapons,” which could be disassembled and easily concealed in a backpack or coat.Accordingly, the list of violations against hunting, animal welfare, and weapons legislation attributed to the man is extensive.

During 14 days of pre-trial detention in autumn 2016, investigators were able to prove, in addition to the shooting of the wolf, numerous further offences against hunting, animal welfare, and weapons law. In October 2015, during the small game hunting season near Termen, he shot a wild boar after illegally luring it with bait. He killed it at night using a weapon that had been illegally modified into a pistol fitted with a silencer. The ammunition used is prohibited during the small game hunting season. To conceal the nocturnal kill, he later fired at the carcass again with a permitted shotgun and duly reported the animal to the game warden. In addition, an illegal shooting of a stag was also proven against him.

The indictment further charges the man with the use of prohibited aids during hunting, particularly at night. For example, the hunter deployed wildlife cameras during the open season, motion detectors, night-vision devices, infrared observation cameras, and laser sighting devices in order to illegally shoot wildlife at night. In addition, he attracted ungulates using salt licks. The use of baiting stations is prohibited during hunting, with the exception of fox pass hunting.

Finally, it could be proven that over many years the man imported numerous weapons, weapon components, and weapon accessories from Germany into Switzerland and exported them from Switzerland to Germany.For all of these imports and exports, the accused did not hold the required permits. However, these offences are statute-barred and do not form part of the indictment.

The case will be heard before the District Court of Brig in the coming spring. For the conviction on the charge of wolf poaching alone, the previously convicted defendant faces a fine of up to 20,000 francs or a prison sentence of up to one year.

This is not the first such case in Valais. Last February, a female wolf was poached in the Val d’Anniviers. In that case too, the Valais public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation. The prosecutor’s office suspects a 73-year-old former official from Vissoie.

Canton of Zurich

Zurich’s Director of Construction and amateur hunter Markus Kägi (SVP) drafted, within his department in November, a fanciful and unscientific report regarding the popular initiative “Wildlife wardens instead of hunters.”

Markus Kägi is in the highest degree conflicted in this matter. Such partiality is utterly unworthy of a progressive democracy. It is completely incomprehensible why the full cantonal government allows the Director of Construction to muddle along in this way and has not removed this dossier from him.

Canton of Aargau

Mr. Jacomella Sergio is among the ringleaders who, together with the barons of lies from the Verband Jagd Schweiz, are attempting to make IG Wild beim Wild disappear from the scene or silence it through arbitrarily contradictory complaints.This is communicated clearly enough in an email to the members of the board. The militant association Jagd Zürich is now also cozying up in the rumpled bed of this unholy alliance.

Instead of seeking professional help, hobby hunters prefer to project their psychopathic disorders onto others. This has now resulted in, among other things, a criminal record entry for hobby hunter Jacomella Sergio.

Evidently, these hobby hunters are neither well trained nor do they possess a sound moral hygiene.

Particularly when it comes to hunting and hobby hunters, it is essential that the public pays very close attention. Nowhere else is there so much manipulation through falsehoods and fake news.Violence and lies are two sides of the same coin.For decades, hobby hunting has been nothing more than a permanently costly construction site, patchwork, and bone of contention for politics, forestry and agriculture, administrations, the judiciary, health insurers, insurance companies, animal welfare, environmental and nature conservation organizations, the police, federal authorities, the media, and so on.

Any other organization with so much criminal energy would long since have been targeted by the federal prosecutor's office!

Current criminal offenses by hobby hunters in Switzerland are listed here: Link

All of this against the backdrop that:

“Jagd Schweiz knows that wildlife populations would fundamentally regulate themselves — even in our cultural landscape — without intervention,” wrote the umbrella association of Swiss hunters on 29.8.2011.

or

“Lowland hunting is not necessary, but it is justified. One could equally ask whether it makes sense to pick berries and mushrooms in the forest!” mused Robert Brunold, President of the cantonal licensed hunters’ association in Graubünden, on 6.10.2015.

Hunters’ slogans are pure window dressing. If one analyzes the hunters’ faction in Swiss politics, for example, it quickly becomes clear that they rarely, if ever, engage on behalf of nature. What does become clear, however, is that exploitation and self-interest are their true motivations. The hobby hunters’ experts are mostly nothing more than lobbyists for a selfish interest group, seeking to preserve and dress up an uncultured tradition. In environmental rankings, hunters even come in last place.

Wild animals are, like us humans, living beings and not resources for hunters’ Stone Age behavior. Wild animals deserve a scientifically grounded approach, not the sectarian practice of hunting. Today, hunting is largely a public spectacle where businesspeople and animal abusers invite partners — to massacre animals.

Under federal law, no canton in Switzerland is required to permit hunting. It is the right of each canton to decide whether hunting is allowed or not. If a canton decides against hunting — or even partially against it — it is free to do so under the Federal Constitution. The canton of Geneva made this exemplary choice long ago.

In December 2017, due to suspicion of numerous criminal offences, IG Wild beim Wild filed a criminal complaint against the militant organisation Jagd Schweiz with the public prosecutor's office in Gossau.

More on this in the dossier: Hunting and Animal Welfare