Ban on the release of bred animals for hunting purposes

Motion / postulate (to be adapted to the canton)

Wording

The Government Council is instructed to amend the cantonal hunting legislation so that the release of captive-bred animals of huntable species for hunting purposes is prohibited throughout the entire canton.

In the alternative, the Government Council is instructed to set out in a report:

1. whether animals of huntable species are being released in the canton, or have been released over the past ten years, which species and quantities are involved, and on which official decisions these releases are based;
2. on which surveys the finding required under Art. 6 of the Federal Hunting Act is based, namely that suitable habitat is available for the species concerned and that sufficient protection is guaranteed;
3. whether the released animals originate from domestic or foreign breeding, and whether, in the case of importation, the federal authorisation required under Art. 9 of the Federal Hunting Act is in place;
4. which species in the canton are on the list of huntable species without a self-sustaining wild population having been demonstrated, and whether their removal under Art. 5 para. 4 of the Federal Hunting Act has been examined.

Justification

Federal law permits the cantons, under Art. 6 of the Federal Hunting Act, to release animals of huntable species. This permission is tied to a condition: suitable habitat must be available and sufficient protection must be guaranteed.

This condition leads to a contradiction that the legislator has not resolved. If the habitat is suitable, a population sustains itself under its own power and need not be supported. If release is necessary because no natural increase occurs, then the habitat is precisely not suitable. The Upper Austrian regional hunting association explicitly points out this contradiction in its own specialist article and states that in such a case the causes should first be remedied.

Release for hunting purposes therefore fulfils no nature-conservation function. It creates a shooting opportunity where no population exists. The widespread justification that hunting serves regulation is moot in these cases: what is regulated is not an existing population but one that has previously been artificially created.

There is also the animal welfare dimension. Birds raised in captivity have only limited chances of survival in the wild. They have not learned a territory, developed no anti-predator behaviour and have no experience of natural foraging. The overwhelming majority of the released animals die not from the shot, but from stress, lack of food, cold, in road traffic or by predators. For Great Britain, where this practice reaches industrial scale, surveys by the hunting industry itself document that of roughly 47 million pheasants released in 2016, at most 18 million were registered as killed. The greater part of the animals appears in no kill statistics whatsoever.

Several legal systems have drawn consequences from this. In the Austrian Burgenland the release is prohibited, in Vorarlberg and Salzburg it requires a permit, and in Vienna the killing of released animals is forbidden.

In Switzerland there is no general ban. A legal opinion commissioned by the Federal Office for the Environment already noted in 2005 that the introduction of huntable animals is of only minor significance, and that essentially only in the canton of Ticino are hunting pheasants released. The federal hunting statistics support this picture: from 2000 to 2024 the number of pheasants killed nationwide fell from 155 to a low of six animals in 2023. The kills are concentrated almost entirely in a single canton. Nevertheless, under Art. 5 of the Federal Act on Hunting, the pheasant remains a huntable species with its own closed season.

A cantonal ban is legally possible. Art. 6 of the Federal Act on Hunting grants the cantons a power, but does not oblige them to exercise it. In addition, under Art. 5 para. 4 the cantons may restrict the list of huntable species. The canton can therefore both prohibit the release and exclude species without a proven population from hunting, without any amendment of federal law being required.

The concern is moreover compatible with the purpose article of the Federal Act on Hunting, which names the preservation of biodiversity and the protection of endangered animal species. The release of bred animals for subsequent hunting serves none of these purposes.

Legal basis

• Federal Act on Hunting and the Protection of Wild Mammals and Birds (JSG), Art. 1, 5, 6, 9, 17 and 18
• Cantonal hunting act and cantonal hunting ordinance (designation and article numbers to be added by canton)
• Animal Welfare Act (TSchG), Art. 4

Background and sources

• Pheasant hunting now takes place almost exclusively in Ticino
• Federal hunting statistics, pheasant, kills across the whole of Switzerland and the canton of Ticino, 2000 to 2024
• Principles of the current species protection law in Switzerland and neighbouring states, legal opinion commissioned by the Federal Office for the Environment, 2005
• Upper Austrian Provincial Hunting Association, Releasing game: between species protection and shooting amusement
• NABU North Rhine-Westphalia, position on the 2018 amendment to the provincial hunting act, species portrait of the pheasant
• British Ecological Society, Increases in generalist predator populations are associated with pheasant releases, 2019
• European Journal of Wildlife Research, How many gamebirds are released in the UK each year?, 2021