Valais seeks permission to eradicate two wolf packs after livestock losses

Valais recorded 219 livestock deaths in 84 attacks this summer, and the canton has asked Bern for permission to remove two entire wolf packs. The application, submitted to the Federal Office for the Environment at the end of August, targets the packs in Augstbord and the Nanz Valley. It includes their cubs.

The request arrives as mountain farmers bring animals down from high pastures and Switzerland enters the fourth phase of its current wolf management system. The canton’s hunting, fishing and wildlife service confirmed the application to Keystone-SDA on September 5, following a report by the Walliser Bote.

The losses have been concentrated in the two areas named in the request. Authorities recorded 54 dead animals in Augstbord and 25 in the Nanz and Ganter areas. The figures give the federal government a defined test case for its policy of allowing more preventive intervention against wolves while maintaining the species’ protected status.

A decision from the FOEN is expected by mid-September 2026. Until then, Valais’s request places the practical pressures of alpine livestock farming directly before the national authority responsible for approving wolf controls.

The Augstbord pack has returned after 14 wolves were culled last winter. Authorities considered the pack wiped out after that operation, but monitoring has since identified at least three new cubs in the region. The development is central to Valais’s argument that a previous intervention did not provide a lasting solution.

The pack in the Nanz Valley also has at least three young. Under the canton’s proposal, both groups would be eliminated in their entirety. The request therefore goes beyond removing individual animals linked to attacks. It seeks authorisation for a full pack cull, including juveniles.

The reported livestock losses have made pack structure a key part of the debate. Wolves reproduce and recolonise territory, meaning a pack that survives a control operation can re-form. For farmers, that can leave the same grazing areas exposed in a subsequent season. For wildlife officials, the repeated appearance of young animals complicates efforts to define when a local intervention has achieved its purpose.

The source material does not identify individual farmers or specify the livestock species involved. It does establish the scale and location of the losses that Valais has submitted to the federal authority for review.

Valais is seeking full removal of two packs while proposing partial culls in two others. In Nendaz and Isérables, where at least five cubs have been recorded, the canton plans to cull two-thirds of this year’s young. It has proposed the same proportion for the Les Toules pack.

That broader programme shows how the canton is applying several levels of intervention at once. Augstbord and Nanz would face complete eradication. Nendaz, Isérables and Les Toules would face targeted reductions among cubs. The approach follows Switzerland’s shift toward preventive wolf population controls, introduced through changes to the management system in 2022.

Valais is not acting alone. Graubünden, Ticino and St Gallen have also issued new culling orders, according to Keystone-SDA. Their actions add to a national pattern in which cantonal authorities are using federal rules to respond to livestock losses and local concerns about wolf presence.

The FOEN must now assess whether the Valais measures meet the conditions for intervention. Its ruling will indicate how far Switzerland’s increasingly active wolf policy can reach when a canton seeks to remove entire family groups rather than individual problem animals.

The FOEN’s decision, due by mid-September, will set the next boundary for wolf management in Switzerland. A full authorisation would allow Valais to pursue two packs that have been linked in the canton’s application to 79 livestock deaths in the Augstbord, Nanz and Ganter areas. A refusal, or a narrower approval, would send the canton back to more limited measures.

The decision will be watched well beyond Valais. Mountain farming depends on the protection of herds grazing far from villages, while wolf conservation depends on maintaining a viable population across the Swiss Alps. The competing priorities are now being handled through a federal approval process, with cantons supplying local attack records and the FOEN determining whether proposed culls comply with national rules.

For Valais, the immediate issue is the next grazing season and the prospect of renewed attacks in areas where packs have already re-formed. For Switzerland, the case will help clarify whether preventive culling can control wolf numbers without turning repeated local interventions into a permanent cycle.

The answer will come after the summer losses have been documented, the packs identified and the requests submitted. The federal ruling is expected to provide the next concrete measure of Switzerland’s balance between wildlife protection and alpine agriculture.