Aargau wants to shoot raccoon

This is “speciesism” in practice, which essentially means: with his attitude towards non-native animals, Reto Fischer once again demonstrates that he is convinced that, by virtue of his species, he is superior to all other species and can therefore treat them as he pleases. This attitude is more than reprehensible and should no longer be tolerated.

Wild beim Wild editorial team · 15 August 2023

Office for Hunting and Nonsense in the canton of Aargau wants to shoot raccoon

Raccoon spotted in Rheinfelden

A news scout reported a raccoon spotted in Rheinfelden in the canton of Aargau to a tabloid newspaper.

The danger to the native ecosystem is great, proselytises Reto Fischer, «specialist» at the Office for Hunting and Nonsense in the canton of Aargau, in the online medium.

Time and again, claims are made from within the hunting milieu that, upon closer analysis, have their origins in hunting literature and similarly unscientific sources.

No scientific basis for smear campaigns

According to experts, there is no scientific basis for the outright smear campaigns against these intelligent animals, nor for the intensive and cruel hunting of them.

Fakten statt Jägerlatein über Waschbären

The public would be well advised not to report raccoon sightings to the local authorities or recreational hunters, since the animals pose no direct danger to humans, unlike the recreational hunter.

Non-lethal measures possible

There are other options, non-lethal measures for controlling the raccoon population, as the EU regulation also provides for. But these are not applied, because the militant recreational hunters, in Switzerland too, prefer to take action themselves, sometimes invoking EU law.

The scaremongering being spread about «invasive» species such as the raccoon runs throughout the whole of Switzerland. As our article “Raccoons have a right to life too!» shows, this dynamic continues elsewhere as well.

More on the subject of recreational hunting: In the dossier Poaching and hunting crime in Switzerland we document cases, legal questions and recurring patterns. The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.

The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.