Psychology of Recreational Hunting in Canton Glarus

In Canton Glarus, patent hunting is practiced.

A patent is valid for one hunting season. Four cantonal game wardens supervise hunting activities and the protection of wild animals. In 2024, recreational hunters killed a total of 1’304 wild ungulates: 324 deer, 532 chamois, 448 roe deer, 14 ibex and 65 marmots. Additionally, game wardens shot 169 animals in the hunting reserves.

Freiberg Kärpf: When protection becomes a bargaining chip

On 15 August 1548, Landammann Joachim Bäldi presented a motion to the Glarus Council to establish the area around Kärpf as a wildlife sanctuary to explain. Population growth, the expansion of alpine pastures, and the introduction of firearms had made a ban on hunting chamois and marmots necessary. Almost 500 years later, the Freiberg Kärpf with 106 square kilometers is one of the largest hunting ban areas in Switzerland. Ibex, chamois, deer, roe deer, marmots, golden eagles, bearded vultures, and wolves live here.

In 2023, something happened that must be read psychologically as a dismantling of the conservation concept: The Federal Council released an eight-square-kilometer area near Elm from the Kärpf hunting ban area. At the same time, an equally large area in the Chrauchtal was placed under protection. The canton subsequently introduced 'day-wise hunting of ungulates' in the former sub-area. The official justification: The area was an 'intensive tourism recreation area'.

Psychologically, this process is revealing on several levels. First, protection becomes negotiating material: What had been valid for 475 years is reshuffled for tourism and hunting interests. The compensation logic ('equally large area protected elsewhere') suggests equivalence, but ignores that wildlife does not adhere to administrative boundaries. Second, the justification 'intensive tourism recreation area' shows a telling shift in priorities: Not the protection of wildlife is central, but the usability of space for humans. Third, the process normalizes intervention in protected areas. What is once opened rarely remains an exception.

'Liberal hunting': Efficiency as an end in itself

The president of the Glarus Hunting Association, Fritz Stüssi, summarized his organization's self-understanding in 2023 in a remarkable formulation: 'The preservation and continuation of our still contemporary, liberal Glarus patent hunting – the actual core task of the Glarus Hunting Association – succeeded excellently for us in 2022 as well.' The 'only measurable parameter' was the shooting numbers, and these showed that 'despite high wolf presence, the current hunting regulations are still on a good course.'

Psychologically, this passage contains several key statements. First, patent hunting is framed as 'contemporary' and 'worthy of being a core task' without naming criteria for this assessment. Second, shooting numbers are declared the sole measure of success: many shots equal good hunting. Animal suffering, ecological impact, population dynamics, or alternatives play no role. Third, the wolf is mentioned, but only as a disruptive factor that has been overcome 'despite everything.' That the wolf actually contributes to population reduction is not acknowledged. Recreational hunting remains the sole hero.

Wolf packs Kärpf and Schilt: Proactive regulation as reflex

Two wolf packs have established themselves in the canton of Glarus: Kärpf and Schilt. In the oldest wildlife protection area in Europe, wolves now hunt, taking over exactly the function for which the area was once created: protecting ecological balance. But instead of celebrating this return as a success, the canton responded with regulation requests.

In 2023, the canton of Glarus applied to FOEN for the shooting of young wolves from both packs. Five cubs were documented in the Kärpf pack, three in the Schilt pack. The justification: Livestock kills by both packs that occurred despite livestock protection measures. FOEN approved the 'removal' of two young wolves from the Kärpf pack and one from the Schilt pack. In 2025, proactive regulation was continued: Five young wolves from the Kärpf and Chöpfenberg packs were authorized for shooting.

Psychologically, it is remarkable that livestock kills by wolves in the canton of Glarus decreased by 80 percent in 2024 compared to the previous year, as Pro Natura confirmed.Livestock protection works. Nevertheless, regulation continues. This shows: Wolf control does not follow damage logic, but control logic. As long as the wolf is perceived as competition to recreational hunting, it will be regulated, regardless of whether damages decrease or increase.

Cormorant culling: When a bird becomes a scapegoat

In 2024, the canton of Glarus once again ordered deterrent culling of cormorants on the Linth Canal. Justification: The grayling population had declined 'dramatically' – in fact, only around 60 grayling were counted on the Linth Canal in 2023, a 95 percent decline in ten years. The cormorant was declared the main suspect.

Psychologically, this blame assignment is a classic scapegoating mechanism. The decline of grayling has multiple causes: water infrastructure development, water temperature increases due to climate change, pesticide contamination, and habitat loss. The cormorant is a natural fish-eater that has always been part of the ecosystem. Declaring it the main problem relieves authorities of responsibility for structural environmental problems. Shooting a bird is cheaper and politically easier than renaturalizing a river. This displacement from systemic causes to individual animal species is a fundamental pattern of hunting psychology.

Chamois: Skewed sex ratio due to hunting pressure

The chamois population in Glarus shows a 'skewed sex ratio': significantly fewer bucks than does. The canton itself identifies this as a consequence of hunting pressure. The response: Hunting pressure on chamois below the treeline is increased to reduce browsing damage in the forest. At the same time, regeneration particularly of silver fir is classified as 'insufficient'.

Psychologically, this reveals a familiar paradox: Hunting creates a gender imbalance because bucks are preferentially shot as trophies. Simultaneously, the resulting population pressure is used as justification for even more hunting. The canton diagnoses the problem ('skewed sex ratio'), even names the cause ('hunting pressure'), but does not draw the consequence (hunting reduction), instead intensifying the measure. This is psychologically consistent with a system that cannot question its own existence.

Game management in hunting ban areas: When protection becomes culling

In 2024, the game management service of the canton of Glarus killed 169 animals in hunting ban areas, supported by volunteer hobby hunters. The justification: So that roe deer, red deer and chamois do not 'eat away the protection forest', they must be 'shot'.

Psychologically, the participation of volunteer hobby hunters in culling within hunting ban areas is a structural contradiction. A hunting ban area is by definition a place where recreational hunting is prohibited. When the same hobby hunters who hunt for pleasure outside the ban area function as 'voluntary support' for game management inside the ban area, the boundary between protection and exploitation blurs. The hunting ban becomes an administrative construct that is permeable in practice. The Geneva model shows that professional game wardens can fulfill such tasks without recreational hunters.

Glarus as paradox

No other canton embodies the contradiction between conservation ideals and hunting practice as clearly as Glarus. The canton that invented wildlife protection in 1548 today opens parts of its protected areas to hunting. It harbors wolf packs that protect the forest, yet regulates them nonetheless. It diagnoses a hunting-induced gender imbalance in chamois and increases hunting pressure. It blames the cormorant for grayling decline instead of repairing aquatic ecology.

The «liberal Glarner patent hunt» is psychologically a system that permanently asserts its own inevitability. The Freiberg Kärpf has proven for almost 500 years that wildlife can exist without hobby hunting. The fact that the canton does not transfer this experience to the rest of the cantonal territory, but on the contrary gradually restricts the protected area, shows how powerfully the hunting narrative operates. It is not facts that determine policy, but identity.

More on this in the dossier: Psychology of Hunting

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