USA: Animal welfare organisations sue over GPS trackers on hunting dogs

Animal welfare organisations are suing California over regulations that allow animals to be hunted with the help of hunting dogs wearing GPS tracking devices on their collars.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund has filed a lawsuit with the Sacramento Superior Court. It describes the GPS-tracker hunting method as “unusually cruel and unfair”.

These tracking devices allow hunting dogs to chase prey to the point of exhaustion — an act of animal cruelty without equal. Hobby hunters comfortably follow the GPS signal in order to more easily shoot a completely exhausted wild animal that can no longer flee.

The Public Interest Coalition and Friends of Animals joined the lawsuit, which is directed at the California Fish and Game Commission.

The lawsuit states that the Commission violated state environmental law by failing to conduct an assessment of the technology's impact on wildlife, said Animal Legal Defense Fund attorney Alexandra Monson.

Hobby hunters have until now also been permitted to use so-called “treeing switches” with their abnormally trained dogs — devices that notify hobby hunters when an animal has been chased up a tree.

Brutal and unnatural hunts using real-time GPS tracking to locate animals are also practised in Switzerland. Depending on the hunting and breed, the hunting dogs roam alone. In a single day, they cover up to 25 kilometers. The job of these small fighting machines: to flush out wildlife and drive it in front of the hobby hunters' guns. The dogs wear colored vests made of the same material used in fencing protective gear. This is meant to protect the dogs from injuries during attacks by wild boar, for example, or from the shots of senile hobby hunters.

Initiative: Wildlife Rangers Instead of Hobby Hunters

The Canton of Geneva is decades ahead with its modern wildlife management using wildlife rangers. There is no need for driven hunts and battue hunts with barking hunting dogs, even though large numbers of wild animals constantly flee from surrounding areas into the Canton of Geneva and stay there when driven hunts are conducted in France or the Canton of Vaud in the same manner as in other cantons.

The hunting ban in Geneva was a sensation and attracted enormous attention far beyond the canton itself. For the hunting world, it was a shock — and still is to this day. Because the Geneva example proves that even in densely populated cultivated landscapes, things can work without hobby hunters — yes, that nature and animals are even much better off, and that people benefit from it too.