Podcast episode: Hunting, wild animals and responsibility

Wild beim Wild researches and documents the 2026/27 hunting season so thoroughly that one almost forgets to go out and check for oneself.

At the centre are hunting accidents, official oversight, wildlife policy, the contradictions of hunting culture, and a concrete offer of help for victims of violence in Ticino.

The episode begins at the limits of hunting oversight: a game warden from Grisons describes thermal imaging checks, vehicle searches and follow-up searches for wounded animals. Yet it is precisely these follow-up searches that reveal the problem: around a thousand take place every year, and by no means every injured animal is found. Added to this are wrongful kills, checks, a horse mistaken for a red deer in the Avers valley, and fatal hunting accidents in mountainous terrain. The central question is: what does it say about a system when it takes intensive controls just to limit the damage caused by its own practice?

Attention then turns to wildlife policy. The lynxes in the southern Central Plateau are a positive sign, but no reason for complacency: the connection between the Jura and the Alps depends on a handful of wildlife corridors, many of which are destroyed or impaired. At the same time, political signs of a shift are multiplying – such as the call for scientifically grounded fox management in Bern, or decisions in Zurich against hunting certain bird species and in favour of supervised dovecotes instead of killing.

Hunting culture is also examined critically: high kill quotas, wolf regulation, problematic shots taken in poor light conditions, and the gap between the associations' codes of conduct and the trophy photos they publicly present. International hunting figures likewise paint an uneven but overall fragile picture: in several countries, hunting licences and new recruits are declining significantly. At the same time, risks and blind spots are becoming visible – from questionable hunting practices to the downplaying of health risks associated with game meat.

Finally, the episode turns to weapon access, violence and concrete help. Following the femicide in Faido, Wild beim Wild supports the «Cassette Arancioni» in Ticino: orange letterboxes through which victims of violence can request support anonymously and with a low threshold. In doing so, the episode links wildlife and hunting policy with a fundamental societal question: who takes responsibility when control, weapons and the consequences of violence are revealed not as isolated cases, but as structural problems?

Closing thought: The season reveals more than isolated missteps. It reveals a system whose consequences become visible in animals, in the landscape and in people – a system that must confront the question of responsibility.