Hunting Law (Switzerland)

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In Switzerland, hunting law consists on the one hand of the provisions of the Federal Act on Hunting and the Protection of Wild Mammals and Birds from 1986 with the associated ordinance of 1988 and, on the other hand, of the hunting laws of the individual cantons with associated ordinances and orders.

Distribution of powers between the Confederation and the cantons

The legislative competence of the federal government is essentially limited to the definition of huntable species and the closed seasons as well as to the elimination of federal hunting areas (protected zones). The federal hunting law is therefore a law on the protection of species ; it provides protection from regulation and hunting use. The FOEN (Federal Office for Environmental Protection) is responsible for enforcing the federal hunting law.

Regulation and use of wild populations, i.e. the provisions on hunting permits, the hunting system, the hunting area and hunting supervision, are regulated in the cantonal hunting laws. This ensures that the organizational and implementation autonomy of the cantons is preserved and that regional characteristics with regard to game species, habitats, problems and traditions are taken into account when hunting.

Cantonal hunting systems

Hunting systems in Switzerland

In Switzerland, the subjective right to hunt as a sovereign right (hunting regimes ) rests with the cantons and thus with the state. In contrast to other countries such as Germany or Austria, real estate in Switzerland does not give any subjective hunting rights. There are three different hunting systems: territory hunting , patent hunting and the special case of state or director hunting .

Territory hunting

The German-speaking cantons of Aargau , Basel-Stadt , Basel-Landschaft , Lucerne , St. Gallen , Schaffhausen , Solothurn , Thurgau and Zurich , which are mostly in the Swiss Plateau , are familiar with hunting in the area . In these so-called district cantons, the hunting rights are leased by the canton as individual areas, which usually include a political municipality, for eight years to hunting companies who pay rent and are also responsible for the game reserve. Only the tenants and those invited by them are allowed to hunt in the area concerned.

Patent hunt

Most of the other cantons, often Alpine or Latin, namely Appenzell Ausserrhoden , Appenzell Innerrhoden , Bern , Freiburg , Glarus , Graubünden , Jura , Neuchâtel , Nidwalden , Obwalden , Schwyz , Ticino , Uri , Waadt , Wallis and Zug , are familiar with patent hunting . In these so-called patent cantons, every hunter can hunt in the entire canton with the exception of the hunting banned areas after obtaining a state hunting license. It is determined which and how many animals he may kill during the short hunting season. The hunters pay patent fees annually.

State hunt

Geneva is the only canton that knows state or director hunting, which excludes private individuals from hunting. Hunting measures are carried out there by state-paid rangers . Damage caused by game is paid for by the canton and thus with taxpayers' money.

history

In the Old Confederation , the subjective right to hunt - the "right to hunt" - was a sovereign privilege in the territories with monarchical government (for example territories owned by monasteries) and with oligarchical government (the territories of imperial cities such as Zurich and Bern) on the other hand the free people's hunt. In the Free State of the Three Leagues (Graubünden), the judicial communities bought the manorial game ban rights in the early modern period. The objective hunting right was regulated by ordinances, decrees and mandates since the late Middle Ages. This involved hunting and closed seasons, the protection and control of certain animal species, the prohibition of unwanted weapons and the use of dogs, as well as the definition of no hunting areas.

The Helvetic Republic declared the landowners to have subjective hunting rights and had the municipalities levy patent fees. After the restoration of the federal state order in 1803, the cantons took over the subjective hunting rights during the mediation period and thus established the hunting shelf, which they then organized as a patent or territory hunt. The Aargau was the first canton to go hunting in 1803; This was followed by Basel-Landschaft (1832), Basel-Stadt (1876), Schaffhausen (1915), Zurich (1929), Thurgau (1930), Solothurn (1933), Lucerne (1930/1941) and St. Gallen (definitely 1950) . The system changes in the first half of the 20th century are on the one hand to be seen as a measure of the state to be able to better protect the game populations (from which the hunters were able to benefit thanks to higher populations as a result), on the other hand, hunting in difficult times from a fiscal perspective better to use. Attempts to ban militia hunts and hand them over to state game controllers were successful in the canton of Geneva alone (1974); in Vaud (1977), in Ticino (1992, only regarding Niederjagd) and in Zurich (2018) they did not find a majority in the respective referendums.

The parallel legislation of the federal government was made possible with the revision of the federal constitution of 1874. The cause was the decline in game populations, which called for protection regulations throughout Switzerland. The Federal Law on Hunting and Bird Protection, passed in 1875, contained very strict protection provisions for the time, so large game was only allowed to be hunted for 14 days and the shooting of mother and young animals was completely prohibited. However, the aim was not to protect animals, but to preserve the hunting population for economic reasons. The revision of 1962 introduced provisions against increasing game damage, and the idea of ​​the species treasure also found its way for the first time. The completely revised federal law of 1986 now names the conservation of biodiversity as the first goal.

With a partial revision of the Federal Act on Hunting and the Protection of Wild Mammals and Birds, which was adopted by the National Council and Council of States on September 27, 2019, newly protected animals should be allowed to be shot to regulate the population. The Federal Council is to be given the authority to approve further protected animal species for stock control by means of ordinances for shooting. Because, in the opinion of environmental and animal welfare associations, the revised law does not take enough account of species protection, the referendum was launched by them, which came about with 58,000 authenticated signatures. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic , the referendum, initially scheduled for May 17, 2020, was postponed.

literature

Web links

Commons : Hunting in Switzerland  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Office for the Environment FOEN - Hunting , accessed on October 4, 2018.
  2. ↑ List of the cantonal hunting and fishing administrations , accessed on October 4, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c hunt. In: Federal Office for the Environment FOEN. October 2, 2018, archived from the original on August 19, 2019 ; accessed on August 19, 2019 .
  4. ↑ a b c d Kurt Müller, Hans-Jörg Blankenhorn: Hunt. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  5. ↑ a b Thomas Müller: Hunting shelves through the ages . In: Association of Zürcher Forstpersonal VZF (Ed.): Zürcher Wald . 48th year, no. 5 , October 2016, p. 4–6 ( archive.org [PDF; accessed February 15, 2019]).
  6. ↑ The year numbers to be found in the literature vary in part; here those are listed according to the Historical Lexicon of Switzerland . The missing information there for Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt are Thomas Müller: Jagdregal im Wandel der Zeit, in Zürcher Wald 48, 5 (2016), pp. 4-6 or the Basel-Stadt law regarding the repeal of the existing hunting law of 4 Taken December 1876, the details for Lucerne and St. Gallen from the relevant cantonal websites.
  7. ^ Hunting Lucerne: A long story - very short. Retrieved February 17, 2019.
  8. ↑ A popular initiative aimed at introducing administrative hunting in the canton of Zurich was rejected in a referendum in 2018 with 83.86% and 16.14%; see Canton of Zurich - Current vote from September 23, 2018, cantonal popular initiative “Ranger instead of hunter” .
  9. ↑ Official Bulletin: Hunting Act Amendment (Parliamentary Debate). parliament.ch.
  10. ↑ Parliament says yes to the shooting. The air is getting thin for the wolf. srf.ch, September 19, 2019.
  11. ↑ Voting campaign launched. Federal Council considers hunting law to be a good compromise. srf.ch, February 27, 2020.
  12. ↑ Vote on the revision of the hunting law has been canceled. bauernzeitung.ch, March 19, 2020.