Property in Siegsdorf hunting-free from 2022

The animal and nature lovers cannot reconcile it with their conscience that hobby hunters shoot wildlife on their property.

That is why the couple filed an application for the legal pacification of their land as early as 2014. At the time, they had no idea it would take eight years before their property would finally be declared hunting-free! Initially, the Lower Hunting Authority of the Traunstein district office stalled for time, then rejected the animal lovers' application: hunting on the meadow adjacent to the house and the woodland property was deemed necessary. The Mönchs then filed a lawsuit with the Munich Administrative Court — successfully! The property will become hunting-free at the start of the new hunting year on 1 April 2022.

Brigitte and Dietbert Mönch cannot reconcile it with their conscience that killers shoot animals on their meadow and the adjacent woodland property. «They shoot the animals practically on our doorstep,» says graduate engineer Dietbert Mönch. On the neighbouring property at the edge of the estate, there is a raised hide and a feeding station to lure animals in front of it.

In 2014, the Mönch couple submitted an application to the Lower Hunting Authority of the Traunstein district office for the legal pacification of their properties, invoking the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights of 26 June 2012: it is incompatible with the protection of property guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights for landowners to be compulsory members of a hunting cooperative and thus forced to tolerate hunting on their land against their will, where the landowner cannot reconcile hunting with their conscience.

However, the hunting authority rejected the application for a hunting law exemption. On one hand, the ethical grounds put forward by the Mönch couple were called into question; on the other hand, it was claimed that hunting on the meadow adjoining their home and on the woodland property was necessary.

Hunting authority rejects application – legal action before the Munich Administrative Court

The landowners subsequently took their case to the Munich Administrative Court. At the hearing on 25 June 2019, Dietbert Mönch stated that he and his wife were, on the basis of ethical conviction, fundamentally opposed to the killing of wild animals, particularly on their own property. Both have been involved for decades in animal welfare and take in animals from shelters and animal welfare facilities. The animal lovers cannot reconcile it with their conscience to have to witness hunters shooting at animals on their own property.

"The hunters claim that our property must be hunted because there is too much browsing damage from roe deer. Yet it is precisely hunting that promotes browsing damage, because it drives the animals into the forest," said Dietbert Mönch. "We can observe how the roe deer stand on our meadow for hours at a time, eating grasses. Without hunting, there would be far less browsing damage."

The fact that the hunting authority rejects a hunting law exemption for the property on such grounds is incompatible with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights. Before the highest European court, the German Federal Government, the German Hunting Association, and other organisations had put forward every conceivable public interest argument (the duty of conservation, the maintenance of a species-rich and healthy wildlife population, the prevention of damage caused by wild animals, …) – the very same arguments also advanced by the hunting side in the Mönchs' case. The European Court of Human Rights had weighed all of these interests and nonetheless reached the unambiguous conclusion that the obligation to tolerate hunting on their land constitutes a disproportionate burden on owners who reject hunting on ethical grounds, and violates Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (protection of property).

Munich Administrative Court upholds property rights: property to be hunting-free from 1 April 2022!

At the end of 2021, the long-awaited news arrived: the Mönchs' property will be free from hunting at the start of the new hunting year on 1 April 2022!

«You have to imagine, this dragged on for eight years!», says Dietbert Mönch. «It seems to be the directive given to the authorities to prevent a hunting ban on private property. For us, it started with them simply not responding. Then they wrote: the ethical justification is not sufficient, we reject it. They denied us access to the files … They claimed they could only meet their shooting quotas if they hunted on our property. At the final hearing, they even produced an expert report claiming that the browsing damage was allegedly so extreme. I then quickly flipped through it: it stated that the browsing damage in our area was not too high at all, but manageable and even showing an improving trend!»

All the greater, then, is the relief: «We've made it through. The court accepted our ethical motivation at the very first hearing in 2019. And now the right of ownership has been confirmed once again.» The Mönchs are now waiting for the written grounds of the judgment.