Swiss wolf policy: incompetence has a face
Last year, only half as many livestock animals were killed in Grisons as in the previous year. A surprising trend, considering that the number of sheep and wolves in the canton has risen.
Albert Rösti Federal Councillor
Bern Convention criticises wolf policy
The Bureau of the Bern Convention, a body of the Council of Europe, criticises the handling of the wolf population in Switzerland as 'extremely worrying' and 'arbitrary'.
The new hunting provisions, driven by Federal Councillor Albert Rösti (SVP), have sparked fierce controversy.
The Bern Convention calls on Switzerland to clarify its definition of 'serious damage' caused by Wolves and to submit an updated report on the wolf population. The killing of more than 50 wolves last winter, without any evidence of attacks on sheep, has raised concerns. As the 'Tages-Anzeiger' reports, citing data from the canton of Valais, not a single one of the 50 animals shot had killed a sheep. This is shown by DNA samples taken from killed animals, which allow them to be traced to a specific wolf.
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Ordinance contradicts the Hunting Act
The rapid changes to the hunting provisions for wolves have drawn internal criticism. Legal conflicts have arisen with both the Bern Convention and Swiss hunting law. Several complaints against the kill orders for wolves in the cantons of Grisons and Valais are pending before the Federal Administrative Court.
The Swiss hunting act itself directly contradicts the ordinance, which, among other things, permits the complete eradication of a pack as soon as one animal of the pack has caused damage. 'With a protected species such as the wolf, the utmost restraint must be exercised,' it states. Federal Councillor Albert Rösti's ordinance is 'entirely incompatible with the hunting act'.
Although, according to the Federal Office of Justice, the SVP Federal Councillor's ordinance is therefore in direct conflict with several laws in force in Switzerland, the massacre is to resume from September 2024.
83% of sheep killed were unprotected
The statistics from the Grisons cantonal Office for Hunting and Nonsense also show that when the wolf strikes, the sheep have often not been adequately protected.
Another figure from the statistics is particularly telling: 83 per cent of the sheep and goats killed had not been adequately protected. 58 animals even lost their lives because no herd protection measures whatsoever had been taken beforehand.
The fact that more wolves have been seen near settlements in recent weeks is a consequence of the uncontrolled kills. These are all young wolves that were scattered by the unscientific shooting of their pack.
Dossier: Wolf in Switzerland: facts, politics and the limits of hunting
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.
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