Lucerne RUEK to Wild beim Wild: «Moderate your tone» instead of answers

In the canton of Zug, the petition by Lucerne lawyer Pascal Wolf triggered a 25-page SWILD study, whose findings led the hunting commission on 16 June 2026 to adopt three concrete measures, including halting the proactive promotion of fox hunting.

In the canton of Lucerne, the same petition led to a plenary vote of 105 to 0 against fox protection, to a consistent refusal to grant the petitioner a hearing and, most recently, on 8 June 2026, to a two-page reply letter from the RUEK president Michael Kurmann, which, of the seven factual questions posed by IG Wild beim Wild, answers not a single one, but instead recommends that one should «moderate one's tone somewhat».

Between the two central Swiss cantons lies a political difference that can be read off a single process: Wolf's submission to the state chancellery. One set of authorities responded by commissioning a wildlife-biology expert study, the other ultimately sent an admonition about tone. Anyone who answers the same petition with two such opposing responses thereby also answers a question that did not even appear in the petition itself: How seriously does a cantonal administration take its own mandate for scientifically grounded wildlife policy?

Act I: 11 May 2026, the Lucerne plenary votes 105 to 0

On 11 May 2026, the Lucerne Cantonal Council, under President Gisela Widmer Reichlin, dealt with Pascal Wolf's petition for the protection of the red fox. Speaking on behalf of the Commission for Spatial Planning, the Environment and Energy (RUEK) was its president, Michael Kurmann. He presented the six arguments of the commission report of 23 April 2026: the red fox was a federally huntable species, regulation served to avoid damage and to contain diseases, the Lucerne conditions were shaped by agriculture and animal husbandry, the Lucerne hunting societies made a «central contribution in the public interest», placing the species under protection would weaken the proven structures, and even protected species had to be «actively managed». Conclusion: «neither factually justified nor economically sensible».

Remarkable was the only counter-speech of the session. Cantonal Councillor Sabine Heselhaus dismantled the commission report in terms of content by placing the One Health approach at its centre. She referred to the Federal Office of Public Health, which estimates around 10’000 cases of Lyme borreliosis per year in Switzerland. She quoted the work of Erik K. Hofmeister and colleagues, according to which significantly fewer infected ticks occur in areas with higher fox activity, because foxes change the behaviour of small mammals and thereby interrupt the transmission chain to the main reservoir hosts. And she cited a French long-term study on the fox tapeworm, according to which intensive hunting did not reduce the prevalence of Echinococcus multilocularis but increased it from around 40 to 45 per cent, because hunting pressure destabilises the social structures of foxes and immigrating young animals spread the parasite further.

Her closing sentence would have been the logical consequence in any open-minded body: «Health policy must not only begin where people have already fallen ill. It must also take ecological interrelationships seriously.» The council then approved by 105 votes to 0 the motion to «take note of the petition in the sense of its report». Heselhaus voted in favour.

A plenary in which a cantonal councillor presents the scientific refutation of the commission report and then unanimously approves the report documents what is evidently already consensus in Lucerne's wildlife regime: that arguments and voting behaviour may be two mutually independent processes.

Act II: 21 May 2026, seven questions to the RUEK President

Ten days later, on 21 May 2026, IG Wild beim Wild addressed an open letter to Michael Kurmann. The letter set out seven precise, source-backed questions concerning the conduct of the procedure, the Lucerne disease statistics, the hunting-internal voices from Zurich and Grisons, the alleged «substantial additional costs», the lack of a scientific basis, the claim that protecting the fox brings «no discernible benefit, not even for the red fox itself», and the consideration of the popular will expressed on 27 September 2020.

The letter set a deadline: a public statement by Thursday, 4 June 2026, and in any case before the matter was dealt with in the plenary. The latter had already been concluded by that point. The expectation of Kurmann was: withdrawal of the report, making up for the omitted consultation, transparent disclosure of the disease and cost statistics. Otherwise, further motions, an expanded petition and, where appropriate, a cantonal popular initiative were announced. The argument was based on data that had found no place in the RUEK report: the canton's own statistics, according to which in the 2018/19 hunting year, of 2’217 foxes killed, 39 were diseased, that is 1.76 per cent. Over 98 per cent of the foxes killed were healthy. Hunting that hits almost exclusively healthy animals cannot contain any disease. More on this in the article Fox hunting in Lucerne: 98 per cent of the animals killed were healthy and in the detailed analysis Lucerne and the red fox: when politics ignores the facts.

Act III: 8 June 2026, the RUEK President's reply

Four days after the deadline had passed, dated 8 June 2026, a two-page reply arrived in Acquarossa, signed by Michael Kurmann, President of the RUEK. Reference number 2001KR.2022-0379. The letter answers not a single one of the seven substantive questions raised. Instead, it offers a mixture of procedural pointer, refusal to argue and lecturing.

Procedural pointer: pursuant to § 82 of the Rules of Procedure of the Cantonal Council, the Council disposes of a petition by taking note of it; any further consequences are «not possible». That is not formally incorrect, but it answers no substantive question, for the seven points of the open letter did not concern the procedural outcome but the lack of substantive and scientific depth of the report.

Justification for the failure to hold a hearing: «A hearing is possible, but not mandatory. In the present case the commission chose not to hold one. The criteria include, among others, the documentation and clarity of the submission as well as the number of those submitting it. The petition was clear in content and correspondingly documented. It came from a single individual. In the commission's view, a hearing would not have yielded any additional insights, which is why it was dispensed with.» In other words: anyone who, as a single individual, submits a petition that is clear in content has a weaker claim to a parliamentary hearing than a poorly documented collective petition. A justification that makes the right to a hearing dependent on the number of persons inverts the logic of the right to petition.

Refusal to engage with the arguments: «Your substantive remarks will not be addressed in detail. The reasoning in the report mentioned is indeed more nuanced.» A sentence that refutes itself. Whoever claims that an argument is more nuanced without demonstrating that nuance evades the burden of proof placed upon them by the critical submission.

Admonishment: «It naturally remains open to you to pursue the matter with all the political instruments available. We would advise you, however, to moderate your tone somewhat.» This is the only concrete reference to the content of the open letter. A commission president who has nothing to say about the Lucerne disease statistics, the Geneva model, Luxembourg, voices from within hunting itself, the popular will of 2020, or the question of an objective justification within the meaning of the Animal Welfare Act, admonishes the sender about his tone.

Act IV: 19 June 2026, Zug shows what would have been possible

Eight days after Kurmann's reply letter, on 19 June 2026, Landammann Andreas Hostettler confirmed in writing to the petitioner Pascal Wolf, on behalf of the Zug Directorate of the Interior, that the cantonal hunting commission had drawn initial consequences from his petition at its meeting of 16 June 2026. The basis was a specialist study that the Office for Forest and Wildlife had commissioned from SWILD: 25 pages, written by Dr Claudia Kistler and Dr Fabio Bontadina, May 2026.

The study arrives at the very conclusion that the Lucerne RUEK could have taken into account in its own report, had it wished to hear it: the licence hunting of foxes practised in the canton of Zug neither sustainably reduces the population size nor contains wildlife diseases. Hunted populations compensate for losses through the increased fertility of vixens, through improved survival rates and through immigration from neighbouring areas. In the canton of Zug, around 308 foxes were killed each year between 2000 and 2025, with a strongly declining trend that, according to the study, is not explained by declining populations but by the waning willingness of hobby hunters to shoot. To illustrate this, the study presents two case examples: the Geneva model without militia hunting since 1974 and the experiences from Luxembourg, where the prevalence of the fox tapeworm fell from around 40 per cent to below 10 per cent after the hunting ban of 2015.

The Zug hunting commission subsequently resolved on three measures. First, in future the data collections will be consistently evaluated separately according to hunting, damage prevention, special kills and animals found dead. Second, fox hunting will no longer be actively promoted. Third, the Office for Forest and Wildlife will inform the public about the negative effects of wildlife feeding on the fox population. This is neither a complete change of course nor a ban, but it is the first documented step by a Swiss canton to bring its own fox management into line with the state of research in wildlife biology. More background in the article Canton of Zug halts promotion of fox hunting and on the campaign page An end to fox hunting.

Two cantons, one petition, a test of political maturity

Pascal Wolf has submitted petitions for a scientific review of fox hunting in more than twelve cantons. Zug reviewed. Lucerne waved it away. Glarus stayed silent, as documented by the article Stop fox hunting, write to the Glarus cantonal council documents. Basel-Landschaft responded without citing a single study, as the analysis Write to the Basel-Landschaft cantonal council shows. The federal comparison reveals: it is not the case that the Swiss cantons would find a uniform set of facts on this question. They react differently because they decide differently what they wish to see.

Comparing Zug and Lucerne, three differences can be noted. Firstly, the willingness to obtain a third-party assessment: Zug commissioned externally what it could not conclusively judge itself; Lucerne consulted exclusively its own cantonal administration, whose status quo was criticised in the petition. Secondly, the approach to hearing the petitioner: Zug delivered its answer to the petitioner personally and based it on a study; Lucerne refused a hearing on the grounds that the petitioner was a private individual. Thirdly, the handling of critical enquiry: Zug provides information about the measures taken; Lucerne recommends a different tone.

What the Lucerne response actually reveals is the threshold at which cantonal wildlife policy in Switzerland finds itself today. On one side a growing body of data, studies, voices from within the hunting community and popular decisions, all pointing in the same direction: hobby hunting of the fox does not regulate populations, does not contain diseases, does not spare prey species and is, in terms of public health policy, rather counterproductive. More on this in the dossier «The Fox in Switzerland». On the other side an administrative apparatus that takes note of this data without permitting its consequences. A RUEK report that does not cite a single study. A plenary session that votes 105 to 0, after hearing a scientific rebuttal in the very same chamber. A committee chairman who responds to seven factual questions with an admonition about tone.

The task that Zug's Department of the Interior saw in a SWILD study, the Lucerne RUEK sees in a critique of style. That is the difference left behind by 8 June 2026.

Sources

• Minutes of the Lucerne cantonal council, session of 11 May 2026, «Petition on the protection of the red fox in the canton of Lucerne / State Chancellery»
• Statement of the Committee for Spatial Planning, Environment and Energy (RUEK) on the Pascal Wolf petition, 23 April 2026
• Open letter from IG Wild beim Wild to Michael Kurmann, Acquarossa, 21 May 2026
• Reply letter from Michael Kurmann, President of the RUEK, to IG Wild beim Wild, Lucerne, 8 June 2026, case number 2001KR.2022-0379
• SWILD expert report: Claudia Kistler, Fabio Bontadina, «Fox management in the canton of Zug», May 2026, commissioned by the Office for Forests and Wildlife of the canton of Zug
• Letter from Landammann Andreas Hostettler, Department of the Interior of the canton of Zug, to Pascal Wolf, 19 June 2026, submission no. 4032.1, reference DI DIS 58479-05
• Erik K. Hofmeister et al., on the effect of fox activity on mouse behaviour and infected ticks
• Comte et al. (2017): «Echinococcus multilocularis management by fox culling: an inappropriate paradigm»
• Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), estimated figures on Lyme disease in Switzerland
• Cantonal disease statistics Lucerne, hunting year 2018/19
• Federal referendum on the revised hunting act, 27 September 2020