How biased is Zurich’s Head of Hunting and Fisheries?
The problem with recreational hunter Urs Josef Philipp, Head of Hunting and Fisheries for the Canton of Zurich, is a familiar one: there is a conflict of interest between private individuals and the public good. Anyone who sits on the board of directors of a company wants to maximise profit. Recreational hunter Urs Josef Philipp is listed as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the company Cervo Volante AG. The company Cervo Volante (flying
The problem with recreational hunter Urs Josef Philipp, Head of Hunting and Fisheries for the Canton of Zurich, is a familiar one: there is a conflict of interest between private individuals and the public good.
Recreational hunter Urs Josef Philipp is listed as Vice President of the Board of Directors of the company Cervo Volante AG The company Cervo Volante (flying stag) is engaged in the manufacture, procurement and distribution of leather, textiles, hides as well as shoes, clothing and fashion accessories of all kinds, derived from domestic recreational hunting, in particular from red deer. Around 11,000 red deer are shot in Switzerland every year — a figure that is on the rise.
Conflict of interest in office
The mandate as Vice President of the Board of Directors of a company that markets hunting products appears to be a sensitive matter. Even if it were legally permissible to work as a senior cantonal employee in the area of hunting supervision while simultaneously conducting business involving the marketing of hunting products, it is at the very least questionable whether this cannot give rise to conflicts of interest.
As Head of Hunting and Fisheries for the Canton of Zurich, Urs Josef Philipp is responsible for hunting affairs in the canton. In his capacity as Head of Office, he is a member of the cantonal hunting commission as well as the operations committee of the Embrach hunting shooting range, against which a criminal complaint was recently filed once again. As a private individual, Mr Philipp serves as secretary, hunting warden and hunting director of the Rickenbach hunting district, as the Verein Pro Töss-Auen states in a press release.
Code of conduct of the Canton of Zurich
The cantonal government of Zurich has issued uniform guidelines for all employees across the entire administration to prevent unethical conduct. The code makes it clear that it is unethical and constitutes a breach of trust if employees derive personal benefits from their professional position to which they are not entitled.
«Should the initiative ‘Wildlife wardens instead of hunters’, which will be put to a vote on 23.9.2018, be accepted, Urs Josef Philipp would hardly be the right person to head the Hunting and Fisheries Office of the Canton of Zurich for this responsible task.»
Carl Sonnthal
The association Pro Töss-Auen expects the full cantonal government and the Zurich cantonal parliament to scrutinize the entanglements and conflicts of interest in the area of hunting oversight in the Canton of Zurich. More on the animal welfare problem of recreational hunting and on hunting myths.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: In our dossiers on the criticism of recreational hunting gather fact-checks, analyses and background reports. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
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.
