The image is the product, not the practice

According to the president of the cantonal hunters' association, the canton of Jura is itself the only canton in Switzerland that requires its hobby hunters, by law, to work one day per year for the benefit of nature.

One and the same man serves as the figurehead of his association for this obligation, publicly opposes the return of wolf and lynx, drives forward the push for bow hunting, which is banned in Switzerland, and, together with his association, positions himself against a ban on lead ammunition. Four roles, one person, one pattern.

The symbolic figure of the conservation obligation: eight hours a year

Nicolas Wallimann is president of the Fédération cantonale jurassienne des chasseurs (FCJC), the cantonal hunters' association. In this capacity, he is the face of the Jura peculiarity that hobby hunters must, by law, perform one day of work in the field of natural heritage in order to obtain their hunting licence, which can alternatively be discharged through a payment of 200 to 500 francs. This regulation is «cas unique en Suisse», a case unique in Switzerland, as the regional broadcaster RFJ puts it. A comparison with other licence hunting cantons confirms this on one decisive point: Grisons requires at least 30 hours of «conservation work» and Ticino several mandatory days involving wildlife counts, biotope work, shooting practice and meat hygiene, but in both cantons this applies only once to candidates during their training, before they even receive a hunting licence. Jura is thus indeed the only canton found so far in which a nature conservation work obligation applies annually and to all already licensed applies to licence holders, not just once for newcomers. Wallimann himself put the actual scope of the Jura obligation at eight hours per hobby hunter and year, spread across roughly 400 hunting licence holders, amounting to around 3,200 hours in total for hedge trimming, forest clearings, watering points and biotope maintenance. Noteworthy in this regard: the hunters' federation does not determine the content of these workdays autonomously. According to the Jura hunting ordinance, it draws up the annual guidelines for this «in cooperation with the Office for Water and Nature Conservation» and must submit them to the responsible department for approval. What actually happens during these eight hours is therefore not decided by the hunters alone, but jointly with the cantonal specialist office and subject to approval by the responsible department.

What other cantons show: Bern as a counter-example

Bern shows a third model and makes the contrast with the Jura even clearer. Instead of a personal work obligation, the canton requires its hobby hunters to pay only a «conservation surcharge» of up to 150 francs for cantonal residents and up to 700 francs for non-residents, which flows into a state-administered «conservation fund». The fund's assets are maintained annually at between 100,000 and 500,000 francs. According to the hunting ordinance, the money may be used for two purposes: measures to preserve or restore habitats and biodiversity, as well as hunting-related expenses for follow-up search assistance. Not only hobby hunters are eligible for contributions, but all private-law bodies or individuals who carry out an eligible project, subject to an annual duty to account to the administering office.

In the practical field of wildlife wardens too, the canton of Bern shows a professionalised model. Anyone reporting a wildlife accident is not referred to a hunting leaseholder or a local hunting association, as is customary in territorial hunting systems in Swiss territorial cantons, but to the responsible, cantonally employed game warden, reachable daily from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. via a central number. Outside these hours, the police take the call. In hunting sanctuary areas, according to the cantonal hunting ordinance, the game wardens are even expressly classified as «cantonal officials», and their statutory duties explicitly include the «organisation and execution of follow-up searches for injured animals». Anyone who fails to report a wildlife accident is liable to prosecution, as the Bern cantonal police expressly state.

This is also remarkable because the hunting lobby has traditionally liked to cite wildlife accidents as a prime example of supposedly «unpaid», «voluntary» work. The association JagdZürich, for instance, writes that hunters «recover injured game and turn out to wildlife accidents at any time of day or night» and make «their time extensively and freely available». Two qualifications put this picture into perspective. First, the work is not really unpaid: in the case of fallen game that dies without external involvement, the responding person may, according to information from the cantonal specialist office, «use the meat for themselves at their own discretion»; while they may not sell it, the personal benefit remains. The canton of Nidwalden goes even further in its hunting ordinance and stipulates that fallen game is to be «utilised as far as possible for the benefit of the canton», not even for the benefit of the individual hobby hunter, only the trophy remains there with the person entitled to hunt. Second, the example of Bern shows that this work can also be organised professionally and at cantonal level: where a salaried body of wildlife wardens exists, it can take over the task, regardless of whether private hunting licence holders are available.

Bern has already drawn this conclusion. Following a reorganisation of the wildlife wardens on 1 January 2014, it is no longer the game warden or hobby hunter who responds to nocturnal wildlife accidents, but the cantonal police. The then Bernese hunting inspector Peter Juesy justified the change in blunt financial terms: his game wardens had accumulated around 5’000 hours of overtime annually on night operations alone, offset by income of only 40’000 to 50’000 francs from the sale of accident game meat, «an important reason to stop doing it», Juesy told SRF in September 2013.

What remains of the tale of «unpaid service»

The hunting lobby's self-portrayal quoted at the outset, according to which wildlife accidents are a prime example of selfless, unpaid commitment, therefore does not withstand close scrutiny from several angles. Structurally, Bern shows that the task can be solved without hobby hunters. Economically, it becomes clear that it was never entirely unpaid: in addition to the personal benefit derived from fallen-game meat, there is in Switzerland a second, small but real revenue channel, the fur trade. At traditional fur markets such as the one in Altstätten, held since 1802, or in Lichtensteig and in the canton of Schwyz, hunters sell their raw pelts directly to buyers, recently for around 8 francs per red fox pelt with tail or 15 francs per marten pelt. The sums are modest, but they contradict the notion of a purely altruistic commitment without any material return. As for the meat itself, we refer to our detailed analysis of the health risks of game meat, and as regards the overall economic balance of hobby hunting, including the costs of wildlife accidents, follow-up searches as well as police and judicial operations, to our dossier on the actual costs of hobby hunting in Switzerland.

The same president against wolf and lynx

What eight hours of mandatory service a year fail to reveal: at the opening of the 2023 hunting season, Wallimann publicly declared that the canton of Jura was unsuitable for the presence of the wolf, that coexistence was not possible. At the FCJC delegates' assembly in March 2024, he reaffirmed this stance: the large predators remained a source of concern, their presence could disrupt the «good balance» of wildlife populations, Wallimann told the regional broadcaster RFJ. On the same occasion, he also spoke critically of a cantonal project for new hunting ban zones in the sensitive wetlands of La Gruère, Les Royes and La Chaux-de-Breuleux: in his view, the planned perimeters also included agricultural land that required no protection, and should be reduced in size.

Wolf and lynx regulate roe deer populations naturally, entirely without a hunting licence, poisoning of the ecosystem with hunting ammunition, compensatory levy or club event. From the perspective of a hunt that lays claim to opportunities to kill roe deer and cloven-hoofed game, they can thus appear as competitors rather than as allies in the purported shared cause of nature conservation.

The push for bow hunting

At the presidents' assembly of JagdSchweiz in April 2025, Wallimann introduced a further topic, based on a motion from the canton of Jura: bow hunting. The assembly commissioned the umbrella organisation to assess interest in and acceptance of this hunting method nationwide, and published a questionnaire, promoted with an image of a solar park where bow hunting could be used instead of firearms.

Bow hunting has been prohibited under federal law in Switzerland for decades: bows and arrows count among the impermissible hunting implements, a ban that reflects the animal welfare principle of avoiding unnecessary wounding and prolonged suffering. An evaluation of around two dozen North American studies on bow hunting shows why this reasoning is compelling: on average it results in a wounding rate of 54 per cent, meaning animals that are not killed instantly but merely wounded. In the underlying study by the University of Oklahoma, involving 22 white-tailed deer that were shot at, 11 animals were never recovered at all. These figures cannot be transferred one to one to Swiss conditions, but they do reveal a considerable, systemic risk of missed and wounding shots. A British study on deer hunting further found that eleven per cent of the animals died only after two or more shots, some suffering for over 15 minutes before death occurred.

And against a lead ban

On the FCJC's own website there is a further indication of the same fundamental stance: the association approvingly links to a piece entitled «Le National refuse d’interdire le plomb dans les munitions de chasse», the report that the National Council has rejected a ban on lead ammunition in hunting, alongside a reference to the Swiss Animal Protection (STS) organisation's demand for precisely such a ban.

Since 1 February 2025 the federal government's revised hunting ordinance has indeed contained a ban on lead-containing bullet ammunition of calibre 6 mm and above, but this ban only takes effect from 1 January 2030: until 31 December 2029 the use of such ammunition remains expressly permitted under the transitional provision. However, this concerns exclusively bullet ammunition for large game such as roe deer, red deer or chamois. Shot ammunition, used to shoot birds and small game, remains entirely exempt from the ban; outside a few wetland protection zones it may continue to be used with lead content without restriction. This is no trivial matter: the Swiss Ornithological Institute Sempach, together with the canton of Grisons, has demonstrated that golden eagles and bearded vultures poison themselves when they eat meat or entrails containing residues of lead-based bulletor absorb shotgun ammunition. In birds and small animals killed with shot, the lead pellets are distributed throughout the entire carcass, unlike with big game, where lead fragments concentrate mainly in the removable gut pile; if such an animal is eaten whole, the intake of lead by scavengers cannot be avoided. Waterfowl also ingest shot pellets directly, mistaking them for food. The risk is documented in humans too: a 2022 STS study found lead levels above the limit in 5 of 13 game meat samples from Switzerland, and the Federal Food Safety Office explicitly warns against lead residues when consuming game meat.

In the Jura hunting legislation itself, neither in the cantonal hunting act nor in the cantonal hunting ordinance, is there a single provision on ammunition or lead that would go beyond the new federal rule.

Four positions, one tension

Four positions produce a recognisable tension: the FCJC presents its annual conservation efforts as a contribution to natural heritage. At the same time, its president holds positions that problematise natural predators, seek to limit hunting-ban zones, initiate the review of a particularly animal-welfare-critical hunting method, and oppose a more far-reaching lead ban.

This does not prove that every single piece of conservation work is ineffective. It does, however, show how narrowly the hunting lobby's concept of nature conservation remains defined: what is acknowledged is above all that which does not fundamentally restrict the practice of hunting. Wherever nature conservation or animal welfare limit kill opportunities, hunting areas, weapons or ammunition, the claimed alliance with nature conservation quickly turns into a conflict.

In the Canton of Geneva, which abolished private hobby hunting by popular vote back in 1974, these questions do not even arise in this form. Necessary interventions are carried out exclusively by paid, permanently employed Gardes de l’environnement, with clear accountability and night vision devices for a high hit rate: «We cannot afford a single accident,» as Geneva's fauna inspector Gottlieb Dandliker puts it. The Geneva model shifts responsibility onto state-employed specialists, thereby enabling a different form of accountability and quality control than a system of over 30,000 private hobby hunters can structurally offer. That the resistance against a more far-reaching lead ban and the push for bow hunting should come, of all places, from a canton with a legally anchored, albeit minimal, nature conservation mandate, shows the difference between a duty on paper and a genuinely lived animal welfare culture.

The IG Wild beim Wild documents how the hunting lobby undermines its own animal welfare claims in practice.

More on this topic: Bow hunting in Switzerland: Clearly to be rejected · Do the Jura hobby hunters protect more than they hunt? · Canton of Jura: Hunting president against the wolf · Lead ammunition: The toxic legacy of hobby hunting · Geneva and the hunting ban · Hunting lobby in Switzerland · Game meat: Why it is often carrion on your plate · What hobby hunting really costs Switzerland