Wolf regulation in Grisons: benefit of pup kills not proven

When the Federal Office for the Environment approved the Grisons applications on 26 August, this concerned twelve packs plus four further packs following confirmation of this year's offspring.

For the Calderas pack, the canton additionally requested complete removal. We have already documented this authorisation situation and the contradiction with the declining number of kills. Since then, the scope has expanded.

According to a report by the «Südostschweiz» from mid-September, all of the canton's applications have now been approved. According to this report, this means that 17 of the 18 known Grisons packs may be regulated, with one pack to be completely removed. On 25 August, 13 packs in the canton were still considered confirmed. A publicly accessible overview by the federal government of all approvals for the 2026/27 regulation period remains unavailable.

The decisive question is therefore no longer whether the kills are legally permissible. It is: do they deliver what they promise? The answer from the national monitoring body is remarkable.

The national monitoring body finds hardly any evidence

Sven Buchmann is responsible at the KORA foundation for the national wolf monitoring, which the foundation operates on behalf of the Federal Office for the Environment. In an interview with the «Südostschweiz», he states that the proactive pup regulation as practised in Switzerland is unique, and correspondingly little is known about its effects.

On the central justifying argument that the kills maintain or reinforce wolves' wariness of humans, he says: "But direct scientific evidence specifically relating to lethal wolf management is scarce." Whether the kills actually trigger any of the claimed effects in practice, and if so, to what spatial and temporal extent, still needs to be investigated.

The question is being examined in a project titled "Effects of Lethal Management", led by KORA together with the FOEN and the cantons. The project is planned for five years and will end in 2029. It aims to clarify not only whether kills affect the number of livestock losses, but also how lethal management changes pack structure, population dynamics, and public attitudes toward the wolf. Precisely because these questions remain open, the claim of a proven preventive protective effect is scientifically untenable. Shooting will continue at the legal maximum until 2029.

The Grisons Office for Hunting and Fishing puts it more cautiously. In a statement from March, it noted that the precise influence of the regulation would only be more reliably assessable with increasing experience and further observations. That environmental organisations have for years been criticising precisely this lack of effectiveness monitoring is nothing new. What is new is that the monitoring body commissioned by the federal government confirms this very same gap. However, this gap concerns Swiss practice, not the underlying question. Research on that has existed for years.

No ecological necessity

It is also notable how Buchmann frames the justification. Asked why the regulation is important from an ecological perspective, he corrects the premise: the preventive kills are not carried out out of ecological necessity, but with the aim of supporting a low-conflict coexistence with humans.

This names the matter for what it is. It is a socio-political measure, not species protection and not ecological control. Anyone who presents it as necessary from a nature conservation standpoint is misrepresenting the justification given by their own monitoring body.

What research has long shown

Buchmann's finding applies to Switzerland's special practice. It does not mean that the underlying question is unresearched. Research on the consequences of lethal interventions in wolf packs has existed for years, and we have compiled it in our overview of studies.

The most recent evaluation comes from Adrian Treves and colleagues and was published in 2026 in "Conservation Science and Practice". It compared five field studies from Slovenia, Michigan, Slovakia, Latvia, and the Golan Heights that met predefined minimum criteria for study design and data transparency. The result was not that kills always lead to more damage. It was that removals do not reliably prevent subsequent livestock losses: in some studies, effects were absent, in others losses decreased, and in others they increased. For Slovakia, it had previously been shown that there was no correlation between the number of wolves killed and livestock losses, but there was an inverse one between the available biomass of wild prey and the number of kills. Public wolf hunting there was discontinued in 2021.

A second strand is decisive for the Grisons case. Cassidy and colleagues showed in 2023 in "Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment", using long-term data from five US national parks, that human-caused mortality was associated with lower pack persistence and lower reproduction in the following year. The effects were particularly strong when lead animals were lost. A 2024 paper in "Scientific Reports" reaches the same conclusion: targeted removal promotes pack dissolution and lower reproduction, particularly in small populations. And a 2022 study in "Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution" found that sheep losses depend more on the protective measures implemented and the number of sheep kept than on the size of the wolf population.

This identifies a mechanism that is also relevant for Grisons and has never been examined there. The targeted removal of pups is a form of human-caused mortality. Whether it destabilises packs to a comparable extent as the loss of lead animals remains open. However, nobody has shown that it has no effect on social structure either, and that is precisely the precondition for calling it harmless. Destabilised packs may, under certain circumstances, kill more livestock, not less. That stable packs kill fewer livestock has been published for over ten years and is consistently ignored in Swiss wolf management.

The body of evidence is not unambiguous on every point, and that is part of intellectual honesty. A widely cited American paper from 2014, according to which kills increase losses the following year, was recalculated in 2016, with the replication not confirming the size and direction of the results. A 2024 model for the Western Alps concluded, under its assumptions, that kills could keep population size and risk level low, because dispersing wolves occupy vacated territories more quickly. However, the authors explicitly do not describe their model as a management tool.

What remains is a clear distribution of the burden of proof. It is not true that nothing is known about the effect of lethal interventions. It is known that removals do not reliably prevent livestock losses, that they measurably impair pack structures and reproduction, and that herd protection is the more effective measure. Grisons is practising the world's most extreme form of an instrument whose milder forms have demonstrably achieved nothing elsewhere. Anyone proceeding this way must prove the benefit. It is not up to the critics to prove that it fails to materialise.

Calderas and Muchetta became conspicuous after the regulation

One detail from the interview deserves particular attention. Asked whether kill pressure can lead a pack to take greater risks when foraging for food, Buchmann points to the Calderas and Muchetta packs, which became conspicuous after the pup regulation. No proof can be derived from this, because several other factors changed at the same time: the pack's social structure, the number and type of livestock in the area, and the herd protection measures implemented.

This restriction is methodologically correct. But it does not answer the question, it leaves it open. And it remains open precisely for the pack whose complete elimination the canton has applied for. Calderas was already under regulation in the 2025/26 period and is now to disappear entirely in the second round. Whether the destabilisation of the social unit contributed to the later attacks is neither ruled out nor examined by anyone. Whoever kills a pack in its entirety simultaneously eliminates any possibility of ever answering this question.

However, the question remains unanswered only if one disregards the existing findings. In 2024, the research commission of the Swiss National Park stated regarding the then-planned complete removal of the Fuorn pack that this was not indicated from a scientific point of view. It pointed out that killing predators often does not reduce future livestock attacks and that in some cases even more attacks are observed, and warned of the consequences of a complete pack removal: young wolves that have dispersed in search of territory and a partner are involved in attacks disproportionately often. Despite this statement, the Office for Hunting and Fishing approved the killing of the Fuorn pack. Following its complete removal, numerous sheep attacks were reported in the area, as National Park Director Ruedi Haller noted. A causal connection has not been proven. But it was exactly the development the research commission had warned against.

This shifts the situation. What Buchmann leaves open for Calderas and Muchetta is described as a mechanism in the specialist literature. Concrete warnings were also available to the office in the Fuorn case, relating to a specific pack, and were overruled. The evidence gap therefore persists, even though international research and expert warnings about the possible consequences of pack removals have long been available.

Wolves limit themselves — but nobody knows from what point onward

Asked whether wolves limit themselves once a certain pack density is reached in an area, Buchmann answers in the affirmative. Science knows two mechanisms for this: increasingly scarce food at high densities, and social factors such as territoriality, intraspecific conflicts and pack size, which lead to higher mortality or fewer pups. The so-called ecological carrying capacity is not a fixed value here and can fluctuate, for instance depending on food availability.

A rough estimate from 2020 assumes an upper limit of 50 to 100 packs for Switzerland as a whole. KORA has no estimate for Grisons alone. The question is currently being examined again in a scientific project, with results still pending.

So there is a mechanism that limits the population without a single shot being fired, but its threshold in the Alpine region is not quantified. The canton intervenes before this question is answered. And in doing so, it reinterprets what is in truth compensation. The three packs newly reported in August occupy exactly those territories whose previous packs were removed or dissolved through killings: Heinzenberg in the area of the former Beverin pack, Giarsinom in the area of the extinguished Fuorn pack, Madlain in the territory of the Sinestra pack, which was completely removed in November 2025. What is presented as growth is, in these three cases, documented replacement. And this replacement provides the justification for the next round of killings.

Commentary: a practice without foundation

Anyone wishing to prove the benefit of the killings must explain the chronology. Livestock attacks fell nationwide from 1,789 in the record year 2022 to 1,051 in 2023, and in Grisons over the same period from 517 to 267. Preventive regulation began on 1 December 2023. The decline was therefore already there before the first preventive shot was fired, and it continued in 2024 with 213 attacks in Grisons. We have already documented this finding. By the end of July 2026, the canton stood at 30 attacks compared with 68 in the same period the previous year, and the AJF itself names the expansion of herd protection as a major contributing factor. Fewer attacks alongside a rising number of packs is not an argument for more killings. The decisive variable is the protection of livestock, not the number of wolves.

The associations Wolfs-Hirten and Wildtierschutz Schweiz accuse the hunting office of having turned from a professionally independent authority into an enforcement body of a right-conservative-dominated policy, and criticise the fact that wolf families are being shot to pieces instead of effective herd protection being implemented. The canton disagrees and considers the interventions proportionate. However, the criticism is directed at a practice whose benefit the monitoring body commissioned by the federal government cannot prove. Therein lies the contradiction: a measure is being expanded to the legally permitted maximum extent while its benefit remains unresolved.

Under international law, too, the regulation remains contested. In April 2024, the Bureau of the Bern Convention assessed Switzerland's handling of the wolf as “very worrying” and described the minimum population of twelve packs set out in the Hunting Ordinance as “arbitrary”. On 5 December 2024, the Standing Committee unanimously opened an investigation procedure into Swiss wolf policy. Particular criticism is directed at preventive killings carried out over merely possible damage and the removal of young animals for baseline regulation. A final assessment is still pending, but conformity is the subject of a formal procedure, not merely a political claim. The downgrading of the wolf from “strictly protected” to “protected” in March 2025 lowers the threshold for interventions, but does not automatically change either Swiss protection law or the requirements for individual kill orders. The precautionary killing of young animals in packs without documented damage remains in tension with the principle of proportionality.

And then there is the question of who decides. The killings are not carried out by the wildlife wardens alone; authorised hobby hunters are involved during the high hunt and the special hunt. The decisions about them are made by an office management that itself belongs to the hobby hunting community: AJF co-director Adrian Arquint publicly describes himself as a passionate hunter and counts himself among the roughly 5,500 Grisons hobby hunters. The licence hunting association organises discussion rounds explicitly in consultation with its office. When the same circle of interests that hunts roe deer and red deer under licence hunting also decides on the decimation of their natural competitor, the claimed professional neutrality requires explanation. These overlaps should be addressed with transparent decision-making bases, not with a reference to legal permissibility.

What needs to be demanded is not complicated:

• All kill applications, approvals and the underlying damage documentation must be published in full.
• Proactive interventions may only be considered where effective herd protection is documented, monitored and fully exhausted.
• The maximum quota of two-thirds of confirmed young animals must be suspended until the KORA investigation delivers robust data.
• Applications for the complete removal of packs require a particularly strict, publicly comprehensible proportionality assessment that takes existing expert opinions into account.

By the end of January, dozens of young wolves can be killed in Grisons. The interventions are legally approved. Their claimed preventive benefit is not solidly proven, and whoever has a protected species killed as a precaution at the legal maximum bears the burden of proving that this intervention is necessary, proportionate and effective. This burden of proof lies with the state, not with those who criticise the killings. Meanwhile, the killing is not happening because the young wolves themselves caused damage, but because they were born into packs for which the state has approved a precautionary maximum quota.

All the background information in the dossier «Wolf in Switzerland: facts, politics and the limits of hunting».

Sources: Office for Hunting and Fisheries Grisons, press release on proactive regulation 2026, 28 August 2026, as well as communication from March 2026; «Südostschweiz», reports and interview by Ursina Straub with Sven Buchmann, September 2026; KORA Foundation, project «Impacts of lethal management», 2025 to 2029; Treves, A. et al., «Removing wolves did not reliably prevent domestic animal losses», Conservation Science and Practice, 2026, DOI 10.1111/csp2.70388; Kutal, M. et al., «Testing a conservation compromise: No evidence that public wolf hunting in Slovakia reduced livestock losses», Conservation Letters, 2024; Cassidy, K. A. et al., «Human-caused mortality triggers pack instability in gray wolves», Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 2023; Research Commission of the Swiss National Park, statement on the complete removal of the Fuorn pack, 2024; Bureau and Standing Committee of the Bern Convention, proceedings on Swiss wolf policy, 2024; announcements from the associations Wolfs-Hirten and Wildtierschutz Schweiz.