Ticino releases the Molare and Lepontino packs for wolf regulation

On 3 September 2026, the Ticino Council of State ordered the partial regulation of the two wolf packs Molare and Lepontino.

After the Federal Office for the Environment (BAFU) issued a favourable preliminary opinion, up to two-thirds of this year's offspring may be killed in both packs. To carry this out, the canton is explicitly enlisting specially trained recreational hunter, in addition to the cantonal wildlife wardens.

A Precautionary Kill

This means Ticino is continuing the so-called proactive regulation. The basis for this is the revised federal hunting ordinance, which has been in force since 1 February 2025. It allows cantons to preventively reduce protected wolf packs without first having to prove any concrete damage. The sole trigger is documented evidence of two or more pups born this year within a pack. Once this evidence is available, up to two-thirds of the offspring can be removed, regardless of whether this particular pack has caused any damage at all.

For the two packs now cleared for culling, this means: neither for Molare nor for Lepontino does the canton cite any specific, pack-attributed kill as justification. The Lepontino pack, which inhabits the orographically right side of the Leventina valley and the upper Lavizzara valley, was already on the kill list in the previous period, triggered at that time solely by five photographically confirmed pups. The Molare pack, along the Alpine ridge between the Blenio valley and the lower Leventina, was only confirmed as an independent pack in the summer of 2026.

The canton's official justification is accordingly framed on a general level: the aim is to reduce the “wolf-attributed livestock kills of the past twelve months”. This is a canton-wide justification, not a pack-specific one. What is being killed are protected predator and its offspring born this year, not because they have been proven to have caused damage, but because the pack exists at all.

Part of a Switzerland-wide pattern

The fact that the killing of protected predators is effectively delegated to recreational hunting is not an isolated case in Ticino. The canton of Grisons has also received federal approval for the season 2026/27 to proactively «regulate» no fewer than twelve packs. As the IG Wild beim Wild has already documented in its Valais wolf report, the technocratic term «regulation» conceals what is actually happening: the systematic killing of young animals and the destruction of stable pack structures. The pre-emptive removal of young wolves has thus definitively become routine across Switzerland.

The regulation appears particularly cynical when one considers who it targets. Cleared for removal are two young animals in the Molare pack and three in the Lepontino pack, all of them pups born in 2026, meaning animals born in spring. The cantonal kill orders explicitly name the «giovani lupi» as the target and even warn shooters not to fire at animals of roughly similar size, so as not to accidentally hit an adult. The canton is thus deliberately designating the pups for killing.

Even if one were to follow the official damage argumentation: the order is not directed against individually conspicuous wolves or those identified as responsible for livestock kills. Those being killed are not individual animals with proven responsibility, but precisely those pack members whose individual involvement in any damage has neither been established nor documented. Moreover, in their few months of life these young wolves could not possibly have caused any livestock kills at all. It is the punishment of offspring for the mere fact that the pack has reproduced.