Rift in the hunters' camp: Ecological Hunting Association questions JagdSchweiz's fox hunting stance

It is a remarkable conflict within the organised recreational hunting community:

While JagdSchweiz wants to preserve fox hunting and intensify it regionally, the Ecological Hunting Association Switzerland (OEJV) represents a view more strongly oriented towards habitat and predator ecology.

On 20 November 2025, JagdSchweiz, the umbrella organisation of Swiss recreational hunters, dated its position paper on fox hunting. The message is unambiguous: hunting the fox is “sensible and useful” and must “absolutely be maintained”. The fox population in the lowlands and in settled areas is “unnaturally high”. The main justification given is the protection of other species, namely the brown hare and ground-nesting birds such as the lapwing, black grouse or woodcock.

The real weakness of the paper lies in the fine print. JagdSchweiz itself admits that current hunting practice “probably has hardly any noticeably limiting effect” on the overall fox population, that local kills are quickly offset by immigration and increased reproduction, and that recreational hunting has “mostly no direct influence” on disease dynamics. According to the association, around 60 per cent of foxes killed do not even end up being used for fur. Nevertheless, the paper demands “regionally very intensive and sustained” hunting, extending to winter earth hunting and trap hunting with box traps. The umbrella organisation thus describes a practice that achieves almost none of what it claims to accomplish, while in the same breath insisting that it must be continued unconditionally and intensively. Wild beim Wild has already broken down these contradictions.

And of all things, the Ecological Hunting Association of Switzerland’s own foundational documents do not support JagdSchweiz’s central justification. The association, founded in 2020, sees itself as the voice of science-based hunting. Its mission statement alone rejects trophy hunting, commits to “protecting endangered animals” and explicitly calls for “a ban on earth hunting” — precisely the method that JagdSchweiz considers particularly effective and indispensable for the fox. In its position papers, the association also names entirely different causes than the fox when it comes to the brown hare and ground-nesting birds.

In its “Position Paper on Hare Hunting” (2023), the OEJV states that the brown hare suffers “above all because of intensive agriculture.” It cites young hares killed by mowing, cleared agricultural land, missing hedgerows, monocultures and pesticides. Predation appears there only as a consequence of the lack of cover in the cleared landscape, not as an independent driver. The paper provides no justification for widespread fox hunting to protect the brown hare.

In the “Position Paper on Hunting Rock Ptarmigan, Black Grouse and Woodcock” (2023), it sounds almost identical: the decline of these populations is “mostly attributable to the loss of suitable habitat,” compounded by human disturbance and climate change. The fox is not named as a cause. The ecologically oriented hunting community thus identifies precisely those factors that JagdSchweiz pushes into the background in favour of the fox.

The difference becomes clearest where both associations draw on the same research. JagdSchweiz cites the local absence of apex predators as one of four reasons for high fox populations and itself writes that lynx and wolves limit mesopredators such as the fox; the association cites research by Elmhagen, among others, as evidence. The OEJV, in its "Position Paper on Large Predators" (2022), relies on the same line of research, specifically Elmhagen et al. (2010), but draws the opposite conclusion. It states that the lynx also limits mesopredators such as the fox, and that "with a growing lynx population" in Finland, "the populations of grouse and mountain hares grew". The "regulating influence" of predators on the fox, raccoon and raccoon dog thus benefits precisely those bird and hare species that JagdSchweiz wants to protect through hunting. Its conclusion: "There is no ecological reason to regulate apex predators."

This brings the real alternative into focus. Where JagdSchweiz resorts to permanent hunting-based predation control, the ecological hunting community relies on upgrading habitats and on the spread and effective presence of predators, which naturally limit the fox. One association wants to hunt the symptom, the other to tackle the cause.

This position aligns with the factual record that Wild beim Wild has documented for years. The canton of Geneva has had no recreational fox hunting since 1974, without overpopulation, epidemics or excessive damage.Luxembourg abolished fox hunting in 2015; according to the Luxembourg veterinary administration, the infestation rate of foxes with the fox tapeworm has not risen since then, but has fallen. And the canton of Zug had a petition by Lucerne lawyer Pascal Wolf examined by an external specialist body, with the result that fox hunting is not scientifically necessary. Wolf is now submitting his proposal in several cantons.

The umbrella association JagdSchweiz regularly dismisses criticism of fox hunting as emotional and detached from the facts. This reflex misses the mark. For doubts about fox hunting no longer come only from outside, but from the hunting community itself, and they are based on the very same research that JagdSchweiz cites in its own paper but fails to follow through to its logical conclusion.