No to Fox Hunting: Lucerne Motion Exposes Fact-Free Policy

In the canton of Lucerne, a parliamentary motion entitled 'No to Fox Hunting' calls for an end to hobby hunting of foxes. What sounds like a regional dispute reveals, on closer inspection, a deeper problem: hunting associations and cantonal authorities base their fox hunting policy on claims that have long been refuted by experience from fox-hunting-free regions and official statistics.

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 11 December 2025

Lucerne jurist Pascal Wolf demands, through his motion, that the canton fundamentally questions the practice of fox hunting.

It should no longer be taken as a law of nature that foxes may be shot simply because that has always been the case.

The central questions are:

Whether there is demonstrable benefit from fox hunting for public health, agriculture, or biodiversity.
Whether the permanent killing of an entire species is proportionate when alternative, non-lethal measures exist.
And on what scientific basis the canton and the hunting lobby are relying at all.

The motion thus directly challenges a hunting practice that today primarily defends a self-image of recreational hunters and a bloody hobby — not the alleged 'public interest'.

JagdSchweiz: Position Paper Without a Reality Check

The scientific void becomes particularly apparent when one compares the arguments put forward in Lucerne with the current position paper by JagdSchweiz on fox hunting. In it, foxes are treated as 'ownerless public property' and a raw material with fluctuating fur prices, fox hunting is glorified as 'sensible and useful' and must 'absolutely be maintained'. Criticism from nature and animal protection organisations is dismissed as emotional and lacking in substance.

The same claims, repeated time and again:

Without hunting, a 'population explosion' among foxes would occur.
Diseases such as fox tapeworm would increase.
Ground-nesting birds and hares would be lost without intensive predator hunting.

What is consistently absent:

a sober evaluation of experiences in regions without fox hunting
an honest engagement with the massive failures of hobby hunters
the integration of current wildlife ecology research

This is not science, but interest politics in camouflage.

Fuchsjagd ohne Fakten: JagdSchweiz erfindet Probleme

Unscientific administrative language: When cantons adopt lobby texts

Cantonal administrations frequently adopt these narratives almost uncritically. In Lucerne too, unscientific hobby hunting is generally described as an instrument to 'regulate' wildlife populations, prevent damage, and secure a balance between wildlife and habitat. Fox hunting appears in this logic as automatically part of an ostensibly objective management approach.

In doing so, key facts are systematically suppressed:

Population dynamics: Intensive hunting leads in foxes to compensatory reproduction and increased immigration from neighbouring areas, rather than sustainably reducing populations.
Diseases: The history of rabies control in Europe clearly shows that the decisive breakthrough was achieved through oral vaccination programmes and not through hobby hunting. The same applies to contemporary strategies regarding fox tapeworm.
Biodiversity: The dramatic decline of farmland birds and hares is primarily a consequence of industrialised agriculture, pesticide use, habitat destruction, and early mowing — not of the fox.

When administrations continue to rely on outdated boilerplate texts despite this body of evidence, that is not scientific — it is merely convenient.

Hobby-Jäger Franz Balmer über die sinnlose Fuchsjagd

Reality check: Luxembourg, Geneva, and fox-hunting-free areas

A look at other regions exposes the scaremongering of JagdSchweiz and cantonal authorities as pure conjecture.

Luxembourg completely suspended hobby fox hunting at the beginning of 2015. Hunting associations predicted a 'population explosion', growing disease risk, and rising damage. What actually occurred: none of it.

Evaluations show:

The fox population has remained stable.
There was no increase in wildlife diseases.
The proportion of foxes infected with fox tapeworm approximately halved between 2014 and 2020.

In the canton of Geneva, recreational hunting has been abolished since 1974. Wildlife management is handled by state game wardens. Despite the absence of widespread fox hunting, there are neither epidemic outbreaks nor ecological disasters. Geneva is today regarded as a model for modern, professional wildlife management.

National parks such as the Bavarian Forest and Berchtesgaden, or other regions free of fox hunting, also show no documented 'fox explosions' followed by collapses in ground-nesting bird populations. Fox densities adapt to food availability, disease, and intraspecific competition.

The Swiss National Park recently celebrated its 100th anniversary. The park is a piece of wilderness left to its own devices, where no one goes hunting. This is not a problem, says National Park Director and wildlife biologist Heinrich Haller. Even without hunting, there are not suddenly too many foxes, hares, or birds. Experience shows that nature can be left to its own devices.

Anyone who, against this backdrop, continues to paint apocalyptic scenarios is acting not out of knowledge, but out of ideology.

When the judiciary sheds light on the reality of hunting

How the environment surrounding JagdSchweiz actually operates was revealed in proceedings before the criminal court in Bellinzona. JagdSchweiz had filed a complaint against IG Wild beim Wild, claiming its honour had been injured by sharp criticism describing it as a 'culture of violence' and a 'militant problem organisation'.

Judge Siro Quadri dismissed the complaint. The stark formulations were classified as permissible value judgements supported by the facts presented. In legal terms, this means: the criticism of the hunting milieu surrounding JagdSchweiz was accepted by the court as covered by freedom of expression, not as defamatory falsehood.

In doing so, the judiciary casts a spotlight on the milieu from which the current fox position papers originate — and from which cantonal authorities prefer to avert their eyes.

Erfolg: Verband Jagd Schweiz verliert

Official figures on hunting practice: the idealised image crumbles

A look at the official hunting statistics also reveals how far the hunting community's self-image is removed from reality.

In the canton of Graubünden, around 10’000 deer, chamois, roe deer, and wild boar are shot every year during the open hunting season. According to data from the Office for Hunting and Fisheries and an SRF report:

approximately nine to just under ten percent of these kills are unlawful
in just five years before 2016, administrative fines of over 700’000 francs were imposed for illegal kills
Between 2012 and 2016, a total of 56’403 animals were killed, of which 3’836 were merely wounded

These figures stand in stark contradiction to the narrative of the disciplined, law-abiding and 'animal-welfare-compliant' hobby hunter, as propagated by JagdSchweiz and uncritically adopted by many cantons.

The fox as scapegoat for agricultural policy and convenience

A central pillar of the unscientific argumentation holds that the fox bears primary responsibility for the decline of ground-nesting birds and brown hares.

Data from Luxembourg, Geneva and national parks, as well as numerous specialist publications, paint a different picture:

The decisive factors are lack of structural diversity, pesticide use and frequent, early mowing.
Where habitats are improved, mowing regimes adjusted and pesticides reduced, populations recover even without fox hunting.

The fixation on the fox thus serves as a politically convenient diversionary tactic: rather than confronting the sacred cows of agricultural policy, the wild dog is declared the scapegoat.

Modern wildlife policy instead of hunting dogma

The Lucerne motion 'No to fox hunting' poses a simple question to the canton:

Does it wish to continue defending a hunting practice based on debunked scenarios and lobby papers, or is it prepared to orient itself according to scientific facts and contemporary animal ethics.

A modern wildlife policy would mean:

Consistent prevention instead of perpetual hunting: waste hygiene, no feeding, secured chicken coops, public education on behavior in residential areas.
Professional monitoring: recording of sightings, dead finds and disease cases, rather than reflexive culling.
Conflict resolution with a sense of proportion: where concrete damage actually occurs, targeted, proportionate interventions rather than open season on an entire species.
Honesty in communication: an end to fabricated threat scenarios and ideologically coloured 'position papers' that ignore fox-hunting-free regions and official data.

Lucerne stands as representative of a fundamental question

The motion by Pascal Wolf is more than a regional concern. It reveals how deep the scientific and ethical crisis of recreational hunting now runs.

Hunting associations such as JagdSchweiz defend fox hunting with arguments that have been refuted by practical examples and hard data.
Cantonal authorities adopt these narratives instead of measuring them against the current state of research.
The judiciary confirms that sharp criticism of this culture of violence constitutes permissible, fact-based value judgements.

'No to fox hunting' is therefore not a radical step, but a long-overdue reality check.

For the canton of Lucerne, this means: either continuing to rely on the unscientific claims of the hunting lobby, or finally beginning to build wildlife policy on knowledge, transparency, and respect for sentient individuals.

Dossiers: Fox in Switzerland: Most hunted predator without a lobby | Fox hunting without facts: How JagdSchweiz invents problems