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The wolf never bites. Yet it is considered a beast.

Tens of thousands of dog bites per year are regarded as an everyday risk, while a wolf without a single documented bite triggers affairs of state.

Wild beim Wild editorial team — 14 August 2026

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860 dog bites in Zurich, 0 wolf bites in Switzerland

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860 dog bites in Zurich alone, zero wolf bites the great double standard

In the canton of Zurich alone, the veterinary office registered 860 cases last year in which dogs bit people.

Over the same period, and in fact ever since the wolf returned to Switzerland in 1995, there has, according to the Gruppe Wolf Schweiz and the KORA foundation, not been a single documented case nationwide in which a wolf bit or even injured a human. And yet it is the wolf that is debated in readers’ letters, interpellations and special broadcasts as a threat to life and limb. The dog gets a prevention poster featuring a cartoon character.

The figures nobody celebrates

The veterinary office of the canton of Zurich reported 860 cases for the past year in which dogs bit people. Particularly frequently affected: children. The canton’s response is a prevention campaign featuring the characters Cleo, Tim and Lupo, intended to teach even kindergarten children the «safe handling» of dogs.

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Nationwide, the picture is no different. A Suva study estimates the number of dog bite injuries requiring a visit to the doctor at around 9,500 per year, while an older estimate even puts it at around 13,000 medically treated cases. A survey by SRF among all cantons arrived at over 7,000 reported incidents per year, with a rising trend since the cantons abolished the mandatory dog courses. Depending on the survey method and the number of unreported cases, the realistic order of magnitude therefore clearly lies in the five-figure range. According to several cantonal analyses, children are disproportionately affected; in some cantons, in every third to sixth case the victim was a child under 16.

Professionals too pay a price that hardly anyone is aware of. According to Suva, an average of around 100 postal workers are bitten by a dog each year, statistically about twice a week. At times, such as in 2018, the postal sector accounted for around a fifth of all reported dog bites. Many of these incidents happen where dogs are kept chained as guard or farm dogs and defend their territory against the daily returning «intruder».

These figures do not prompt any special broadcasts. There are no cantonal motions demanding a leash requirement for all dogs, no calls for population regulation, no tabloid campaigns. People discuss prevention leaflets, and that is it.

Nursing cows: the silent danger on the hiking trail

Anyone hiking in the Alps in summer is more likely to encounter a herd of nursing cows than a wolf, and that encounter is not harmless. In Grisons, according to the cantonal office, attacks by nursing cows occur an average of two to three times a year, with minor to severe injuries. In 2010, two people died in such attacks on pastures in St. Gallen, and in 2015 a 77-year-old woman was trampled to death by a herd of nursing cows near Laax. Nor did it stop at isolated cases afterwards: incidents, some with serious injuries, are reported in practically every hiking season, most recently around Flumserberg.

These deaths and injuries caused dismay, but no calls for «regulation» of the cattle population, no demand to preventively remove nursing cows from the mountains. People discussed fencing off, warning signs and awareness-raising, that is, precisely the herd protection logic that is regularly dismissed as «not sufficient» in the case of the wolf.

The wolf: zero bites, zero deaths, maximum uproar

And the wolf? Since its return to Switzerland in the mid-1990s, not a single attack on a human has been documented, no bite, no injury, let alone a fatality. This is confirmed by both the Gruppe Wolf Schweiz and the canton of Zurich in its own wolf action guidelines. A Europe-wide study covering the period 2002 to 2020 found just twelve attacks involving fourteen people, two of them fatal, both in North America. In Switzerland: zero.

Nevertheless, the mere sighting of a wolf or a single livestock kill is enough to trigger cantonal interpellations, special culls and a constant media barrage. In February 2026, Vaud had the KORA foundation scientifically assess the effectiveness of its own wolf culls, after the number of livestock kills, at 160 cases in 2025, had barely fallen despite ten animals killed and considerable personnel effort. The canton itself justified the commission with the need to «continuously review the effectiveness of the measures taken».

This policy is driven from two sides. On the one hand by parts of the hobby hunting community, who see the wolf as a competitor for «their» game. A particularly striking example is the Ticino Council of States member Fabio Regazzi (The Centre), former hunting president in Ticino and vice-president of JagdSchweiz. His parliamentary initiative for a politically fixed upper wolf limit has meanwhile even won the support of the Federal Council, as wildbeimwild.com documents in detail. Regazzi’s line has been consistent for years: the problem lies not in a lack of herd protection or unprotected pasture farming, but in the wolf itself, as an analysis of his political career shows.

On the other hand, it is livestock owners themselves who in many places stir up sentiment against the wolf, often out of justified anger over individual kills, but combined with a demand for blanket culls instead of consistent herd protection. These two interest groups, hobby hunting and part of the alpine farming sector, reinforce one another: the one provides the political vehicle, the other the emotional distress that works particularly well in the media.

Why this imbalance is no coincidence

The difference lies not in how dangerous the animals are, but in who benefits from the fear. Dogs and nurse cows belong to no one who could be attacked politically; they are part of everyday life, which is accepted and whose risks are met with prevention rather than kill lists. The wolf, by contrast, has become a symbol on which two interest groups vent their energies: parts of the hobby hunting community, who see the wolf as a competitor, and parts of the alpine farming sector, who prefer to demand culls rather than consistent herd protection. As the dossier on hunting myths shows, the threat scenario is systematically deployed to secure political majorities for kills, regardless of what the numbers actually reveal. The role of the media is not neutral in this either: livestock killed by the wolf routinely receive prominent coverage, while the actual accident statistics involving dogs, mother cows or hobby hunting itself receive scant attention, as described in the dossier on media and hunting topics.

For context, it is also worth taking a look at hobby hunting itself: hunting accidents caused by hobby hunters claimed at least 75 human lives between 2000 and 2019, as documented in the fact check on the JagdSchweiz brochure. This too is rarely discussed with the same volume applied to commenting on every single wolf sighting.

Conclusion

If danger were actually measured by case numbers, dogs and mother cows would have to dominate the political debate, not the wolf. Instead, an animal without a single documented bite in three decades is declared a state affair, driven by hobby hunters such as Fabio Regazzi and part of the alpine farming sector, while tens of thousands of dog bites per year are accepted as an everyday risk. This is not a question of statistics. It is a question of whose interests are served by the fear.

Further reading