Ö1, RTR, Solothurner Zeitung: recreational hunting without context

On 27 October 2026, Ö1 broadcast a portrait of hunting in Austria in its “Journal-Panorama” series. The title: “Far more than just shooting”. Two days later, the Solothurner Zeitung published a portrait of a recreational hunter that used the same formula: hunting, it said, was “far more than just shooting”. What this portrait leaves out, we have already described. Now the Viennese behavioural biologist Kurt Kotrschal, in a guest commentary in “Die Presse”, calls the Ö1 programme a failure of journalism. The conservation organisation Austrian Nature Conservation Alliance (ANCA) joined the criticism with a press release on 2 November.

Three media outlets, two countries, one pattern: the recreational hunters tell their story, the editorial team adopts it, and the context is missing.

What Ö1 broadcast

Helene Seelmann's programme aired on 27 October at 6.25 pm. The programme announcement mentions the critics in a single sentence: opponents criticised hunting “as anachronistic and needlessly cruel”. According to ANCA, however, the voices heard were mainly those of the hunting community, including Anton Larcher, president of Jagd Österreich. Klaus Hackländer, head of the Institute of Wildlife Biology and Game Management at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, appeared as the scientific expert. According to ANCA, independent ecologists, so-called eco-hunters and representatives of nature conservation were absent.

Any assessment of Hackländer should include what a balanced programme would have had to say: his institute produces expert reports on the wolf for the Land of Tyrol, most recently on 26 March 2026 on behalf of the state government (report as PDF), among other things on the question of what effects the removal of wolves has. Tyrol is one of the federal states that has the most wolves killed. Anyone who supplies the basis for kills is not a neutral observer of kill policy.

The 30 per cent figure on the wolf

In the programme, Hackländer said, according to ANCA, that the wolf population grows by around 30 per cent every year and therefore has to be regulated. That sounds like a constant of nature. It is a snapshot from the phase in which wolves recolonise empty habitats. Hackländer knows this himself. In his expert report for Tyrol he writes that the growth rate of 30 per cent is "probably maintained until the carrying capacity of the habitat is reached". For Tyrol, "significantly less than 30% growth" should be assumed, among other things because of Swiss wolf policy, which is "already drastically reducing" the number of dispersing young wolves. These qualifications were missing from the programme.

How such a population actually develops was studied over twenty years by a team around Aimara Planillo, using Germany as an example (Planillo et al. 2024, Wildlife Biology). The number of pups recorded per litter falls the more densely neighbouring wolf territories lie; it rises with habitat quality and the experience of the female. Reproduction is therefore density-dependent. The authors assume that the carrying capacity in their study area has not yet been reached and that survival is likely to decline once the landscape is saturated. Extrapolating a flat growth rate ignores precisely these mechanisms.

Kotrschal puts it this way, according to ANCA: "In principle, wolves should not be hunted; they regulate their density extremely efficiently themselves." Kills can also destabilise packs and change the behaviour of the remaining animals, as we explained in the dossier on the wolf in Switzerland set out. Since 2022, Austria has had around 70 wolves killed by the authorities, according to a complaint to the EU Commission shows. In the current year, according to WWF, at least 29 had been killed by early October, after 22 in the whole of 2025.

What was missing from the programme

According to Statistik Austria, recreational hunters in Austria killed around 690,500 wild animals in the 2025/26 hunting year, including 296,900 roe deer and 64,400 foxes (summary of the hunting statistics). According to ANCA, the true figure is higher, because killings of protected predators, beavers and birds carried out with official authorisation are not recorded separately, nor are shot dogs and cats.

Kotrschal misses the “placing of hunting within an overall political and ecological framework” and lists what the programme left out:

• the hunting of endangered and ecologically important species
• cruel hunting methods
• the killing of dogs and cats by recreational hunters
• lead contamination of game meat, on which the evidence is unambiguous (Hunting Fact Check)
• radioactive contamination of wild boars

His conclusion: Austria needs fundamental hunting reform and a nationwide uniform hunting act. Among other things, ANCA demands closed seasons for all huntable species, a ban on trap hunting, earth hunting and enclosure hunting, an end to the shooting of pets, and a ban on lead ammunition.

The same pattern in Switzerland

In Switzerland we are well acquainted with this kind of reporting. The Grisons SRG broadcaster RTR raffles a hunting licence among the recreational hunters who submit a kill report and crowns the “most beautiful” trophy photo. The ombudsman rejected our complaint, arguing among other things that the requirement of objectivity does not apply because the programme is entertainment. With 114 signatures, the case is now before the UBI (Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television).

The Solothurner Zeitung let the president of the Thal hunters say he enjoys “something fine on the plate” and goes up to the high seat to “wind down”, and let the statements stand without asking any questions. And as early as 2025, TeleBärn invited the president of the Bern hunting association to a televised debate in which he made statements that we subjected to a fact check.

The Ö1 case is more serious than RTR's entertainment formats. The “Journal-Panorama” is an information programme. Anyone portraying recreational hunting there cannot hide behind the excuse of entertainment.

What public broadcasters owe their audience

In Switzerland, the Federal Act on Radio and Television requires that information programmes present facts and events fairly, so that the audience can form its own opinion (Art. 4 para. 2 RTVA). Licensed programmes must also adequately express the diversity of views (Art. 4 para. 4 RTVA). Anyone who believes this has been breached must contact the ombudsman's office within 20 days of the broadcast and then the UBI, even without being personally affected, provided at least 20 other people support the complaint.

In Austria, the ORF Act obliges the broadcaster to select and convey information objectively and to give due consideration to the diversity of opinion. Complaints go to the media authority KommAustria. Anyone not personally affected needs the support of at least 120 people who pay the ORF licence fee. The deadline is six weeks from the broadcast, which for the 'Journal-Panorama' of 27 October means 8 December 2026.

A hunting programme in which hunters and an expert who works on kill policy have the floor, and independent voices are barely heard, is not a portrait. It is image-polishing with public funds. The non-human animals at the heart of the matter appear in it only as game meat, population figures or a problem. Their suffering, the wounded animals, the follow-up searches, the missed shots and the pets that have been shot all remain unheard. That Ö1 and the Solothurner Zeitung used the same formula of hunting as 'more than just shooting' within two days of each other is no coincidence. It is the language of the recreational hunting associations, and it ends up in the programme unchecked.