Bern: Criticism of Cantonal Bernese Trophy Exhibition
Friday and Saturday, January 31 and February 1, 2025, the 89th Fur and Pelt Market Thun takes place. IG Wild beim Wild criticizes the Cantonal Bernese Trophy Exhibition and calls for boycotting the fair. Killing as "pastime" is an anti-culture.
The event is primarily a pure hunters' gathering to gloat over the victims of the past hunting season. Just as primitive bush people in tropical rainforests like to display their shrunken heads, Bernese hobby hunters also take pleasure in attracting negative public attention with their trophy cult.
Although there is no comprehensible and scientific reason for hunting animal species such as carrion crows, rooks, jays, magpies, feral domestic cats, raccoons, raccoon dogs, foxes and badgers during small game hunting, these wild animals and also domestic animals are killed annually primarily as "recreational activity" by hobby hunters. There are also no cantonal shooting quotas for these animal species as there are for deer or roe deer.
Those who kill senselessly do not protect, and it benefits civilized society nothing. Hobby hunters thus do not ensure healthy or natural wildlife populations, especially not with their abhorrent fox hunting.
trophy hunting
IG Wild beim Wild criticizes that the organizer Messezentrum Thun Expo provides a platform for militant people who indulge in a culture of violence, within the framework of a misunderstood nature experience.
It is tasteless to promote the killing of animals as a kind of entertaining 'recreational sport'. Under the guise of connection with nature, hunting causes immeasurable suffering – every year many animals are wounded by missed shots or terrorized senselessly. Many of them die slowly and agonizingly.
Hobby hunters in Switzerland are demonstrably involved year after year in four-digit numbers of legal violations according to media reports, such as violations of hunting law, poaching, weapon smuggling, environmental and traffic offenses, animal welfare violations and other crimes.
In recreational hunting, practices are employed that animal welfare law actually prohibits. In doing so, hobby hunters frequently inflict considerable pain on these sentient beings. Moreover, incidents occur annually where missed shots or ricochets injure or even kill people, rifle bullets strike houses, or walkers suddenly come under fire.
Recently, a court in Bellinzona ruled: Because of these hobby hunters, wild animals in Switzerland suffer or practically everything that is cruel, unnecessary and heartless is promoted by hobby hunters.
Recreational hunting not necessary according to experts
Recognized wildlife biologists agree that from an ecological perspective there is no necessity for hunting. According to the renowned biologist Prof. Dr. Josef Reichholf, natural regulation of animal populations living in the forest takes place through environmental influences such as weather, food availability and diseases. Predators such as fox, lynx or wolf also have a positive influence in the natural ecosystem. Foresters have recently recognized this. English scientists also came to the conclusion that fox populations, for example, regulate themselves based on food availability and social factors. Hunting, on the other hand, destroys the age and social structures of animal populations, which leads to increased reproduction among survivors. Losses in the population are thus quickly compensated by offspring and immigration or even overcompensated. Recreational hunting is therefore unnecessary, counterproductive and cruel.
The IG Wild beim Wild demands a ban on recreational hunting.
