Saint-Ursanne: wildlife wardens shoot the football fox

On 15 September, a fox ran onto the football pitch in Saint-Ursanne (JU), forcing the referee to briefly halt the cup match between FC Clos du Doubs and FC Glovelier. The video went viral in the canton of Jura. A few weeks later the animal is dead: a game warden shot it after a report from the club, as «Le Matin» reports.

A fox the whole village knew

The Champs-Fallat ground lies in the middle of nature, between the Doubs and the SBB viaduct, of all places close to the cantonal environment office. Players regularly saw the animal under the floodlights during training. A local resident described it as completely unafraid. A farmer believes he recognises the fox as the animal that came to his farm every evening throughout the winter to feed there.

This account raises a question that the report leaves unanswered: had the fox become accustomed to easily accessible food near people? Foxes that regularly find food near houses lose their shyness. Whether that was the cause in this animal's case has not been established.

The reasoning of the club and the game warden

The person in charge of the ground justifies the report by citing the safety of around sixty juniors who train every Wednesday. The fox came as close as one metre and tampered with balls and equipment. Finally, after a general assembly, it wandered through the open door into the clubhouse bar. According to all accounts available, it did not bite or attack anyone.

The responsible game warden shot the animal on a Saturday. He justified this by saying that the fox had been taking chickens near residential buildings. In his view, trapping it and then relocating it would only have shifted the problem without changing the animal's behaviour.

Complaint to the public prosecutor

Raoul Jaeggi, a former member of the Jura cantonal parliament, had filmed the video. He reacted with outrage: “Capture it, fine, but why shoot it?” According to «Le Matin», he filed a complaint with the public prosecutor of the canton of Jura on Monday. He does not claim that a criminal offence has been committed. He does, however, demand that the decision to kill the animal and its execution be reviewed.

Which alternatives were considered?

The question is not whether a fox “has no business being” on a football pitch. The question is what was tried before the shot was fired. The report says nothing about this. Were possible food sources removed, chickens secured, the refreshment kiosk kept closed, or a targeted Deterrence attempted? All that is known is that the game warden dismissed a trap from the outset as unsuitable.

Switzerland has been considered free of fox rabies since 1999. Tameness alone is therefore no indication of illness. Whether the animal posed a concrete danger should have been judged by its actual behaviour. What is documented is curiosity, playing with balls and a visit to the kiosk, but not a single attack.

The individual case must be distinguished from the fundamental debate on regular fox hunting, which Wild beim Wild addresses in the campaign “End Fox Hunting”. Both, however, share the same reflex: the fox is quickly seen as a nuisance, even though, as a eater of mice and carrion, it plays an important role in the ecosystem. More on the role of predators such as wolf, lynx and fox is documented on Wild beim Wild.

That game wardens step in instead of recreational hunters is fundamentally right. This was demanded, for instance, by the then Zurich initiative “Game Wardens Instead of Hunters”. Professional wildlife management, however, means precisely that killing remains the last resort and not the first. Whether that was the case in Saint-Ursanne remains open. Whether the public prosecutor will open proceedings is not stated in the report.