Switzerland’s wolf cull is sending shockwaves through the international conservation community
At last week’s International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Congress held in Abu Dhabi (9-15 October 2025), members adopted Motion142 calling on Switzerland to uphold science-based wildlife conservation.
Why? Because Switzerland’s hunting laws (recently modified despite the outcome of a 2020 national referendum) now allow native and supposedly “protected” wolves, as well as beaver and ibex, to be more easily killed based largely on spurious, unscientific reasons.
Wolves, those eternal scapegoats, are quite literally being massacred, for 8 months a year.
Cubs whose only crime is to have been born are being culled en masse and 6 packs are being eradicated entirely.
Of the 113 cubs recorded in 2025, 73 have been approved for culling. The government calls this “basic regulation”.
13 adult wolves will also be killed, though past culls have shown more will be shot simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The mistaken killing of wolves is deemed perfectly acceptable collateral damage. In the canton of Valais, up to 50% of the wolves shot were the “wrong” wolves. Three lynxes and a livestock protection dog have also been shot by mistake, but the government insists its game wardens and hunters are “specially trained”.
86 wolves in total are targeted with elimination this time, most of which have never attacked livestock.
And this is just for “proactive regulation” from 1 September 2025 to 31 January 2026.
A further 20 “reactive regulation” (from 1 June to 31 August 2025) kill orders were issued and 8 wolves shot.
Legal killing is now responsible for 70% of total known wolf mortality (since 1996) in Switzerland.
No other European country targets wolves in such numbers irrespective of livestock damage or shoots “protected” wolves whose core territory lies within “protected” national parks and UNESCO World Heritage Sites… for allegedly killing two cows.
Indiscriminate culling isn’t just bad for wolves, it risks making livestock predation worse thereby betraying the very industry this policy purports to serve and triggering a race to the bottom where more and more wolves are shot to counter more and more livestock depredation.
Killing wolves is also bad for Swiss forests which are so heavily and selectively browsed by deer in some regions that they are failing to regenerate and changing their species composition. Wolves create a “landscape of fear” which keeps wild prey on the move, enabling forests to recover.
It would seem however that the Swiss Government won’t let either forests or wolves recover.