International scientists led by the University of Bern have found evidence of lynx poaching in the canton of Valais. They demand that central legal authorities deal with the illegal hunting of protected predators.
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Cases of lynx poaching in Valais have been known since 1995.
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International researchers led by Raphaël Arlettaz from the University of Bern have discovered a whole system of lynx traps in the mountains on the Rhone knee near Martigny. For Arlettaz’s team from the Institute for Ecology and Evolution, these traps on the central immigration corridor through which the lynx migrate from the foothills of the Alps to the Valais indicate intensive local poaching. The University of Bern and the Kora Foundation, which deals with predator monitoring, agreed in 2016 and 2019 that the distribution of the protected lynx is lowest in Switzerland in the southern Lower Valais. Accordingly, the lynx population south of the Rhone is 80 percent lower than that in the foothills of the Alps.
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