Criticism of Trophy Display St. Gallen in Walenstadt
How such events connect tradition, commerce and animal suffering.
Criticism of fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland, exemplified by the traditional trophy display of Canton St. Gallen in Walenstadt (SG) on March 6, 2026.
Wild animals are not commodities for entertainment, prestige and commerce.
IG Wild beim Wild harshly criticizes fur, pelt and trophy events inSwitzerland. Such events present killed wild animals 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 prizes or traded as commodities. This practice promotes an outdated trophy culture in which not the animal as a sentient individual matters, but the hunting achievement and the size of antlers, horns or other 'success markers'.
Particularly offensive is that such events additionally serve as a marketplace for the fur trade. Fox pelts and other hides are purchased, evaluated, sometimes awarded prizes or raffled off. This trade ignores the suffering behind every single pelt and contributes to viewing wildlife as raw material. While politics and society are taking steps toward restricting the fur trade, Switzerland continues to celebrate a commercialized form of recreational hunting that is hardly ethically defensible.
Such markets are not folklore, but part of a system that commodifies animal bodies. When pelts are traded at unit prices, animal suffering becomes a calculation. Precisely this logic is incompatible with a modern understanding of wildlife protection .
The IG Wild beim Wild also points out that the depicted hunting practice often conveys a sanitized image. In reality, missed shots, injured animals and long paths of suffering are part of recreational hunting's everyday reality. These aspects are neither addressed at such events nor openly communicated by those responsible. The claim that trophy shows serve to analyze wildlife population status is hardly tenable. Scientifically supported monitoring instruments do not require displayed skulls and antlers that primarily serve self-presentation. Trophies are a material expression of killed wildlife whose shooting quality, tracking and suffering barely appear in the official image.
From an animal welfare perspective, it is also concerning that children and young people are introduced to such events without being taught a respectful and contemporary approach to wildlife. Instead of knowledge transfer, a spectacle takes center stage that trivializes violence and propagates a romanticized hunting world.
Weapons dealers, optics manufacturers, hunting accessories, hunting trips, raffles of hunting kills abroad: An industrial hunting violence system emerges in which kills 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 to be fundamentally reviewed politically and socially.
The IG Wild beim Wild calls on officials in municipalities, cities and cantons to fundamentally reconsider such events. A civilized society needs no competitions where dead wildlife are presented as successes, and it needs no market where pelts are traded like arbitrary commodities. What is needed instead is a respectful understanding of wildlife, professionally founded wildlife ecology and a departure from recreational hunting.