Fabio Regazzi shifts the wildlife debate

In hardly any other policy area does the tension between evidence and vested interests become as apparent as in Swiss wildlife policy — and hardly any parliamentarian stands as consistently on the side of those forces that place intervention, control and culling at the centre as Fabio Regazzi (Centre/TI).

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 9 November 2025

Switzerland is once again facing an alarming decision: the Committee on Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy of the Council of States (UREK-S) has resolved to downgrade the protected status of the common merganser and to permit targeted regulation, including culling.

The Swiss Ornithological Institute Sempach explicitly states that it has no evidence that common merganser populations threaten fish stocks through predation alone. Furthermore, this concerns a specialised Alpine population (“northern Alpine foothills”) for which Switzerland bears a special responsibility. When a regulatory measure is adopted on the basis of hypothetical harm, poor decisions are likely to follow — a serious risk when dealing with protected species.

The primary causes of declining fish populations are not predators, but rather habitat loss, water pollution, dams, climate change and non-native species. Focusing hunting measures by hobby hunters on a single bird species diverts attention from the real problem and creates symbolic politics rather than effective conservation work.

The common merganser is actually a success story for species protection: its population has recovered in recent years to 600 to 800 breeding pairs, says SP National Councillor Hasan Candan. However, this stands in contrast to 150’000 recreational anglers. Anyone who truly wants to help fish should improve their habitats — the waterways, which are in poor condition — rather than shooting mergansers, argues the Lucerne politician. The shooting is entirely the wrong approach and only creates more problems.

In hardly any other policy area is the tension between evidence and vested interests as stark as in Swiss wildlife policy, and hardly any parliamentarian stands as consistently on the side of those forces that place intervention, control, and culling at the centre as hobby hunter Fabio Regazzi (Centre/TI) of the militant organisation JagdSchweiz.

Erfolg: Verband Jagd Schweiz verliert

His political career over the past decade reads like a series of cumulative attempts to align wildlife policy more closely with hunting-oriented and utilisation-driven priorities. The scientific perspective, which in conflicts with wildlife typically calls for nuance and differentiation, is frequently pushed to the margins in this approach. The following chronological account illustrates how this political line emerged, how it became entrenched, and why it is regarded today as a problematic area.

2015–2018 marks the beginning of an escalating trajectory in wolf policy. While Switzerland’s wolf population at that time was still small and subject to close scientific monitoring, Regazzi began systematically steering the political debate towards the question of culling. He submitted parliamentary questions and interpellations aimed at simplifying shooting procedures, at a time when specialist agencies were demanding above all one thing: solid monitoring data and uniform standards. These recommendations had not yet been implemented, yet political pressure for interventions was already intensifying. It is during this phase that the pattern emerges which has defined Regazzi’s environmental policy to this day: the political demand for a cull comes before the scientific analysis.

In 2019, this pattern intensified with the revision of the Hunting Act. Regazzi was among the active proponents of the version that would have granted cantons far-reaching powers to shoot protected species — a concept experts described as “politically accelerated management of ecological problems.” Scientifically controlled decision-making mechanisms would have been weakened, while local user groups would have gained disproportionate influence. In retrospect, the Swiss electorate's rejection of this revision in 2020 is widely regarded as a clear rebuff of precisely the political direction that Regazzi embodied. Yet rather than a course correction, what followed was an intensification.

The years 2021 to 2023 represent a phase of outright steamrolling. During this period, Regazzi intensified his parliamentary interventions on wolf policy, repeatedly calling for “preventive” culls and supporting cantonal efforts to intervene as early and as comprehensively as possible. The available evidence was unambiguous: the WSL demonstrated in repeated reports that indiscriminate culling destabilises pack dynamics and tends to exacerbate damage. Nevertheless, Regazzi's rhetoric remained constant: the problem lay not in the structures of land use, not in the absence of preventive measures such as livestock protection, not in spatial development — but in the wolf. The political message was clear, even if it lacked scientific grounding.

In 2023/2024, the goosander emerges as the new target. Here the dynamic is particularly apparent: even before specialist agencies had been able to fully assess the available data, and before it was clear whether the species contributes to fish stock reductions to any meaningful degree, Regazzi publicly called for regulation. While the Federal Council and scientific bodies explicitly pointed to the absence of evidence, Regazzi spoke of the need for control. Political logic thus overrides ecological reason — a stable, recurring element of his work.

In parallel, a climate is developing in Ticino in which conflicts over hunting and nature policy point far beyond regional significance. Media reports document controversial hunting practices and population declines of individual species, while important conservation projects such as the Locarnese National Park are failing. The reasons are manifold, yet the political front is composed of forces that reject restrictions on hunting and land use — a line that Regazzi regularly supports. The fact that scientific analyses identified clear benefits for the Locarnese was politically suppressed. Opposition was guided less by ecological insight than by vested-interest logic and land-use conflicts.

Taken together, this chronology presents an overall picture that critical observers describe as a structural misalignment: an environmental policy that systematically displaces scientific differentiation in favour of hunting-aligned priorities. Regazzi acts less as a mediator between interests and research than as a political amplifier of a perspective that regards wildlife primarily as a problem. His rhetoric is dominated by terms that invoke threat, proliferation, and loss of control — terms that stoke emotion but distort scientific reality. A local incident becomes a national danger; a single species becomes a political crisis figure.

At the same time, his political activities largely lack the perspective that characterises modern wildlife policy: habitat management, prevention, ecological governance, genetic stability, tourism pressures, climate adaptation. Regazzi consistently focuses on militant intervention. The causes of wildlife conflicts — many of them man-made — remain structurally underexposed. The result is a politics of symptoms rather than solutions: culling when conflicts arise; relaxation of shooting regulations when conflicts recur; political acceleration when resistance stirs.

The sharpest criticism of Regazzi’s approach is therefore not ideological but knowledge-based: a wildlife policy that shoots faster than it analyses destabilises precisely those ecosystems it purports to protect. Switzerland faces climate change, relentless tourism pressure, and the strain of urban sprawl — yet the political responses remain trained on the rifle.

Regazzi is not the only actor in this pattern, but he is one of the most consistent. His chronology of recent years shows how a policy oriented toward hunting-aligned interests can gradually become the guiding principle, even when it is scientifically contested or lacks majority support in society. The question of whether this approach benefits our ecosystems thus becomes a fundamental one. From the perspective of many experts, the answer is sobering.

The initiative to approve the shooting of the goosander is a dangerous signal — for species conservation, for ecological reason, and for an ethically reflective hunting culture. Anyone claiming that a fish-eating bird like the goosander represents a meaningful step toward saving endangered fish species is thinking too narrowly and risks causing more harm than good.

IG Wild beim Wild wishes to remind: species are not simply variables in a utilitarian calculation — they are part of living nature that must be protected. What we label ‘regulation’ today could become the norm tomorrow, signifying the creeping erosion of the conservation ethos.

We demand: an immediate halt to the proposed culling and, in its place, a genuinely scientific and integrative approach to nature and wildlife protection.