Humanewashing: how recreational hunting sells killing as care

Corporations have long known the principle. Anyone running an environmentally damaging business surrounds it with language that sounds sustainable: «climate-neutral», «nature-friendly», «responsible».

This is called greenwashing. Less well known is this principle's twin when it comes to dealing with animals. The US organisation Committee to Abolish Recreational Hunting has coined an apt term for it: humanewashing. This refers to the use of carefully chosen words that make killing appear compassionate, necessary or useful.

An important distinction is often overlooked here. Recreational hunting cultivates two languages, not one. One is directed inward, at its own guild: the hunters' jargon with terms like «aeser» (mouth), «schweiss» (blood) and «strecke» (bag), which defuses the act of killing for those involved themselves. We dissected this internal language in the article «Hunters' jargon: how hunting language sugarcoats killing». The other language is directed outward, at the public, the media and politics. It sounds factual, bureaucratic, almost scientific, and that is precisely what this piece is about. For while the internal jargon merely creates distance, the outward-facing language serves a strategic purpose: it is meant to legitimise recreational hunting.

The vocabulary of legitimation

The language directed at the outside world avoids anything unsavoury. A wild animal is not killed, it is «culled» or «taken». The kill is called «regulation», «population control» or «wildlife management». Recreational hunting is presented as «Hege» (game husbandry), as «care», as «sustainable use» or «management» of a resource. Where an animal dies outside of hunting, it disappears discreetly as «Fallwild» (animal found dead).

These terms share a common feature: they borrow authority from economics, administration and science. «Sustainable use» comes from forestry. «Management» sounds like business rationality. «Regulation» suggests a technical, value-free intervention, as neutral as adjusting a thermostat. Anyone who uses these words unwittingly places themselves alongside experts, authorities and ecologists. Killing as a hobby activity disappears behind a facade of objectivity.

When language collides with effect

The crucial question is: does the effect actually match the term's claim? In the case of the word «regulation», this can be tested using red deer. According to the Federal Hunting Statistics, the population in Switzerland is currently estimated at around 40,000 animals, and it continues to grow, even though kill numbers have been rising for years. This is not a contradiction seen only by critics: the cantonal Office for Nature, Hunting and Fisheries already stated in its report «Overview of the Red Deer Situation in St. Gallen» (2022) that the current hunting «cull» is insufficient in some areas to regulate the population. The term therefore does not, by itself, carry the claimed effect. Anyone who sells «regulation» as an effective reduction or stabilisation of a population must show that the measure actually achieves this goal. Where populations continue to grow despite rising kill numbers, all that remains of the word is a claim.

Our analysis «Why recreational hunting is making the problem it claims to solve worse» shows why recreational hunting, in part, even fuels the overpopulation it claims to combat. And whether the self-image of the recreational hunter as a conservationist holds up to a sober comparison is examined in our fact check «Recreational hunters as conservationists?». In both cases, the same pattern applies: the terms promise what the figures fail to deliver.

The word «Hege» works similarly. It suggests care, protection, and nurturing. Yet under this label, one can find feeding, baiting and other interventions that increase populations locally or displace wild animals spatially. On top of this comes hunting pressure for a large part of the year. Where areas of rest and retreat are lacking, this can turn the claim of care into its very opposite, turning «Hege» into a euphemism for the very disturbance it should actually name.

Who the language serves

If this were merely a critique of words, little would be gained. The crucial question is: who benefits from killing sounding like care? The answer points to concrete interests. The association needs the image of the responsible custodian of nature to justify a leisure activity involving firearms to society. Authorities need it to present kills as orderly wildlife management, rather than tackling the hard structural questions of habitat, traffic and agriculture.

How thin the caring rhetoric becomes once things get serious is shown by Ticino. There, in connection with wolf regulation, talk arose of the «armed arm of the state» and new «rules of engagement», that is, police-military vocabulary that has nothing left in common with «Hege». We documented these statements and their context in «Ticino: recreational hunting, the state's monopoly on violence, and the factor-4 myth». Anyone speaking this way is not describing tradition or care, but the mobilisation of armed recreational hunters for a state-defined kill mandate. There is no contradiction between «armed arm of the state» and «Hege», but rather a division of labour: one is the function, the other the packaging.

An honest debate begins with honest terms

«Regulation», «Hege», «cull» and «sustainable use» sound technical and neutral. But they are not automatically so: they already suggest that killing wild animals is necessary, caring or ecologically effective. When used without proof of actual effect, they linguistically legitimise killing and neutralise criticism before it has even been examined. This is precisely why authorities and hunting associations must disclose what concrete goal a kill is meant to achieve, how its success is measured, and what non-lethal alternatives have been considered. Whoever says «regulation» must prove regulation. Whoever says «Hege» must show wherein the welfare of the individual animal, the population and the habitat actually lies.

Anyone who wants to protect wild animals must not allow language to turn an animal's death into an invisible administrative act. This is not about a «harvest» or a «cull», but about an animal that dies from a shot. We gather further fact checks, analyses and background information in our dossiers on recreational hunting.