Criticism of the Glarus Fur Market in Glarus
How such events combine tradition, commerce and animal suffering.
Criticism of fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland, exemplified by the traditional fur market in Glarus (GL) on February 14, 2026.
Wild animals are not commodities for entertainment, prestige and commerce.
IG Wild beim Wild sharply criticizes fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland. Such events present killed wildlife year after year as trophies, decorative objects and trade goods. This normalizes a treatment of wild animals that is no longer contemporary and clearly contradicts societal expectations regarding animal ethics and respect for fellow creatures.
The organizers sell these events as tradition preservation and as a contribution to so-called wildlife management. In reality, killed wild animals are at the center, whose body parts are measured, graded, awarded or traded as commodities. This practice promotes an outdated trophy culture in which not the animal as a sentient individual counts, but hunting performance and the size of antlers, horns or other 'success markers'.
Particularly offensive is that such events additionally serve as a marketplace for trading furs. Fox pelts and other hides are bought, evaluated, sometimes awarded or raffled. This trade ignores the suffering behind each individual pelt and contributes to viewing wild animals as raw material. While politics and society take steps toward restricting fur trade, Switzerland continues to celebrate a commercialized form of recreational hunting that is ethically hardly justifiable.
Such markets are not folklore, but part of a system that monetizes animal bodies. When pelts are traded at unit prices, animal suffering becomes a calculation. This very logic is incompatible with a modern understanding of wildlife protection incompatible.
The IG Wild beim Wild also points out that the depicted hunting practices often convey a romanticized image. In reality, missed shots, injured animals and prolonged suffering are part of the everyday reality of recreational hunting. These aspects are neither addressed at such events nor openly communicated by those responsible. The claim that trophy shows serve to analyze the condition of wildlife populations is hardly tenable. Scientifically based monitoring instruments do not require displayed skulls and antlers, which primarily serve self-promotion. Trophies are a material expression of killed wild animals, whose shooting quality, tracking and suffering barely feature in the official narrative.
From an animal welfare perspective, it is also concerning that children and young people are introduced to such events without being taught respectful and contemporary treatment of wild animals. Instead of knowledge transfer, the focus is on spectacle that trivializes violence and promotes a romanticized hunting world.
Arms dealers, optics manufacturers, hunting accessories, hunting trips, raffles of hunting licenses abroad: This creates an industrial hunting violence system in which killings and animal bodies are part of a marketing system.
Those who kill senselessly do not protect, and it serves no purpose for civilized society. Hobby hunters thus do not ensure healthy or natural wildlife populations, especially not with their abhorrent fox hunting. Such events regularly raise questions about ethical aspects, licensing practices and public impact, and they finally belong under fundamental political and social review.
The IG Wild beim Wild calls on those responsible in municipalities, cities and cantons to fundamentally reconsider such events. A civilized society does not need competitions where dead wild animals are presented as successes, and it does not need a market where pelts are traded like ordinary commodities. What is needed instead is a respectful understanding of wild animals, professionally grounded wildlife ecology and an abandonment of recreational hunting.