Switzerland sells wolf massacre as a success

From September 1, 2024 to January 31, 2025, cantons terrorized the wolf population in Switzerland for the second time and carried out a massacre, orchestrated by Federal Councillor Albert Rösti (SVP).

Editorial Team Wild beim Wild — June 1, 2025

The right-wing Federal Councillor Albert Rösti (SVP) and fan of the American President Donald Trump has absolutely no love for the wolf.

“ The wolf has no place in Switzerland ,” he proclaimed back in 2021 to a private television camera. A former member of the Federal Council from the same party is campaigning for the decidedly far-right AfD and is on familiar terms with Alice Weidel.

After his election to the Federal Council, Albert Rösti abused his power and manipulated politics and authorities.

Laws were broken, democratic referendums were ignored, and illegal hunting methods were implemented. The whole thing resembles a ghost train ride in an amusement park.

Over 145 wolves have been massacred in Switzerland during hunting since then – including parents and young animals, unauthorized individuals, even protected species such as lynxes and a livestock guardian dog, all predominantly without proof of damage.

This is despite the fact that a decline in livestock kills by wolves had already begun before right-wing extremists organized the massacres of wolves. The reason for the decline in livestock kills is and remains improved herd protection – not guns. A similar situation can currently be observed in Brandenburg.

Wolf attacks are declining sharply in Brandenburg

It wasn't just in the canton of Valais that the wrong wild animals were shot by amateur hunters during the 2024/25 massacre. There, 11 of the wolves shot were apparently not even part of the packs authorized for culling. This is the conclusion of genetic analyses conducted at a laboratory of the University of Lausanne.

The cantons have repeatedly provided false information, violated hunting laws, communicated faulty data transfers, and misjudged situations. The responsible cantonal authorities are overwhelmed by the challenges, and their diligence leaves much to be desired, as evidenced by the numerous court complaints. Through legal maneuvering, many complaints are preemptively blocked, as if operating in a legal vacuum.

Now, the responsible Federal Office (BAFU) has addressed the massacres, which have been criticized by the Bern Convention and over 200 nature conservation organizations on six continents, in a " report ".

Sloppiness in Katrin Schneeberger's office

This war report from Katrin Schneeberger's office is a hodgepodge of contradictions, falsifications, misinterpretations, disregard for national and international laws, and outright lies. It's a disgrace that taxpayers' money is wasted on such sloppiness.

The introduction itself is a distortion. The opposite is true. Livestock depredation decreased before the massacres, and wolf populations began to stabilize.

The wolf population (and fox population) regulates itself within a certain range in an area and no longer increases, but instead expands across borders. Regulatory mechanisms include increased territorial fights, higher mortality rates among young animals, and limited food availability.

The number of livestock kills is not dependent on the wolf population, but rather on livestock protection measures. In the past, there have been years with particularly high numbers of kills despite low wolf populations. The majority of the killed livestock are taken from unprotected alpine pastures.

The owners of farm animals are destroying and encroaching on the habitat of wild animals, even high in the mountains.

Upon closer analysis, virtually no section of the FOEN report offers any meaningful insight. The massacres don't regulate anything; they merely decimate the population temporarily. What is sustainable about wasting tens of millions of francs of taxpayers' money on this every year? The Bern Convention explicitly calls for more effective livestock protection and non-lethal methods for dealing with the predator.

Furthermore, Switzerland has arbitrarily set a limit of twelve packs. According to experts, at least twenty would provide a scientific basis.

By point 5.5 at the latest, one has had enough of the ludicrous level of fiction and superstition in the report from Katrin Schneeberger's office. "Although Switzerland cannot look back on a centuries-long pastoral tradition..." To this, science says: As early as 5000 BC, shepherds in the southwest of the country began bringing their flocks to the alpine pastures. Shepherds tending their flocks thus have a long tradition in Switzerland.

Katrin Schneeberger and her team are completely lost. The pseudo-science at the Federal Office is the real problem, with its unrealistic whitewashing of the massacres, and apparently lacks the backbone and ethics to stand up against misguided policies.

One can only hope that there will be even more lawsuits, complaints, resignations, impeachment proceedings and the like.

Since the wolf returned to Switzerland in 1995, there have never been any attacks on humans. In comparison, recreational hunting has claimed dozens of lives. Hundreds are injured each year. And within the cult-like community of recreational hunters, the cantons issue thousands of charges and fines annually because these hobby hunters are unequal to the responsibility and are now also hunting wolves.

The wolf is not included in hunting regulations, just like the ibex, wildcat, lynx, golden jackal, bear, otter, etc. All are considered protected, as stated on the FOEN (Federal Office for the Environment) website. Therefore, recreational hunters are not permitted to hunt them. This is reserved exclusively for game wardens. The wolf is and remains a protected animal, and a recreational hunter does not have the right to target it as they would any other protected animal. Charles-Henri de Luze, president of the hunting association in the canton of Vaud, has also clearly stated that this, if anything, is the responsibility of game wardens. Anything else is a distortion of the facts by those who themselves repeatedly cause significant damage. Furthermore, no data on wolf kills is collected in the federal hunting statistics .

The Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) and the cantonal hunting authorities aren't concerned with science, but rather, like at a fairground, with the presentation of shooting gallery targets. Hunting-free areas like the national park, where chamois and ibex populations have been stable for decades, or entire countries with hunting bans, clearly demonstrate this. In Luxembourg, fox hunting has been prohibited for over 10 years because common sense and science have prevailed. The canton of Valais recently reinstated trophy hunting of ibex for wealthy foreigners. Hobby hunters are pulling the strings in these offices, intent on creating suffering even at the legislative level.

The biomass

The biomass of all wild animals (from elephants to dormice) currently amounts to only 3%. This means that humans and their livestock, mostly bred under cruel conditions, represent a ratio of 97% to 3% of all wild animals on the continents! A truly unparalleled disproportion that should give us pause.

Pie chart showing the global biomass of terrestrial vertebrates, indicating that livestock make up 65%, humans 32% and wild animals 3% of the biomass.

Swiss agriculture is extremely over-subsidized and has reached dangerous industrial proportions. In 2023, over 80 million animals were slaughtered.

In 2023, around 56,500 sheep died due to insufficient herding – but only about 1,000 of these were killed by wolves due to inadequate herd protection. That's less than 2% of the deaths! In addition, around 1,023 cattle died – but only 6 of these were killed by wolves. That's less than 0.6% of the deaths during the summer grazing season!

According to the UN, no other country in the world has such a high proportion of endangered species as Switzerland.

But the relevant lobby groups and right-wing extremists are making the wolf a scapegoat. In 2024, all applications for wolf massacres were justified on the grounds of preventing harm to livestock! What a mockery when these same groups are responsible for transporting 80 million animals to the slaughterhouse.

The backward-looking hunting policy damages the ecological balance, harms the forests, the protected forests, and Switzerland's international reputation. The reputation of a country that likes to boast of having the best animal welfare laws in the world has suffered enormous damage since Albert Rösti's appointment to the Federal Council.

It cannot be repeated often enough: The wolf is not the problem. The problem is those who make it the enemy in order to distract from their own psychological, political, or moral failures.

Dossier: Wolf in Switzerland: Facts, politics and limits of hunting

Further reading