Zurich: Fox caught in illegal steel-jaw trap
A fox was caught in an illegal steel-jaw trap in the canton of Zurich. The game warden had to put the animal out of its misery. The homeowner was reported to authorities.
The game warden had to put the suffering wild animal out of its misery.
The trap had been set by a homeowner, who has now been reported to the authorities.
What the game warden encountered on 7 October 2020 in a residential area in the Marthalen-Rheinau district was shocking: a fox was caught in a kill trap, its eyes bloodshot. He put the animal out of its misery.
He had been notified of a fox with a “collar around its neck”, the game warden told the Andelfinger Zeitung.
He had gotten “a little loud” with the homeowner after finding the injured animal. The latter had only muttered to himself. How long the fox had been in the trap is unclear. It had been horrible, the warden said. Something like that was unimaginable.
«I am at a loss for words”, Mathias Richter, chairman of the Marthalen-Rheinau hunting association, also told the newspaper. And Urs Philipp, head of the cantonal fisheries and hunting authority, called the case “an absolute disgrace”. The matter is now being handled by the Zurich cantonal police: a complaint has been filed for violation of the hunting law and the animal protection law.
The leghold trap that was used is particularly cruel because it does not kill the animal but merely holds it fast. The snap trap laid out in the garden had jagged teeth. What happened to it, the game warden does not know. He took possession of the dead animal, and the hunting police collected it.
Steel-jaw traps and all traps other than box traps used for hunting have been banned in Switzerland since 1 April 1988. The law, passed by the federal chambers in June 1986, replaced the old ordinance from 1925. In Germany, these traps are still permitted in most federal states!
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.
