Buying woodland and keeping it hunt-free: How private property becomes a protected zone for wild animals

Buying a piece of woodland, leaving the trees standing, letting nature take its course: what sounds like an expensive dream is more affordable than most people think.

A report by Swiss Radio and Television shows private individuals doing exactly that, out of love for nature, not for profit. For people critical of hunting, this immediately raises the further question: can you exclude so-called hobby hunting — leisure hunting without any existential necessity — on your own woodland and thereby create a genuine refuge for wild animals?

Buying woodland is possible, but rarely visible

Anyone who has never seen a woodland advertisement is not alone in this. Woodland plots are hardly ever publicly advertised; the trade traditionally takes place quietly through the local district foresters, through neighbours and through inheritances. By now, however, there are specialised marketplaces as well as cross-border woodland exchanges covering the entire German-speaking region. Prices vary widely, demand clearly exceeds supply, and since the pandemic the desire to own woodland has grown noticeably.

Important to know: anyone who buys woodland does not acquire a freely available plot of land. The forest act severely restricts ownership rights. A building ban applies, the public right of access remains in place, and management obligations are added on top. So you cannot «privatise» the woodland. What you can achieve, however, is the exclusion of hobby hunting, and this is precisely where it becomes political.

Where you can buy woodland and land

Because woodland is only rarely openly advertised, a targeted approach pays off. Three routes are the most likely to lead to your goal.

Contacting the local forestry service. The classic and most commonly recommended route in Switzerland: the responsible district forester of the desired municipality knows the local ownership situation and often knows who is willing to sell. In Germany and Austria, the municipal or regional forestry offices take on a similar role.

Use specialised forest marketplaces. There are now platforms that fill precisely the gap left by public listings:

• Switzerland: Wooded.ch (forest marketplace with offers and requests, free for both parties) and TerraWald.ch (discreet off-market brokerage).
• Across the DACH region: the Wald-Börse with offers and requests from Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
• https://my-forest.de/wald-kaufen/
• General property portals: On the large search portals, woodland tends to appear only as part of larger properties, but a search for «forest» or «woodland plot» with an email alert can be worthwhile.

Place your own listing. Anyone with a particular region in mind can place a request in the local newspaper or in specialist forestry journals. Since many forest owners have ties to agriculture, agricultural advertising papers are also a sensible place.

A realistic note: demand significantly exceeds supply, and cheap plots costing a few francs per square metre are — especially in the German-speaking area — the exception rather than the rule. Anyone buying should find out beforehand about the obligations that come with being a forest owner, as patience and local knowledge are often more important than the budget.

The key: hunting closure on ethical grounds

The legal basis was laid long ago, and not through a single ruling but through established case law of the European Court of Human Rights. In three separate proceedings against three different states, the Court reached the same conclusion: Chassagnou v. France (1999), Schneider v. Luxembourg (2007) and Herrmann v. Germany (2012). The core is the same each time: anyone who rejects hobby hunting on ethical grounds cannot be forced to tolerate it on their own land. Such an obligation to tolerate it violates the protection of property under the European Convention on Human Rights.

This sets the human-rights guardrail: under the Strasbourg case law, states are obliged to allow landowners an exemption on grounds of conscience — the precise design is left to them. France, Luxembourg, Germany and Portugal have adapted their hunting law accordingly. The three German-speaking countries, however, draw very different conclusions from this to this day.

Germany: the way is open

Germany has responded. Since the end of 2013, landowners have been able to apply under Section 6a of the Federal Hunting Act for the exemption of land from hunting on ethical grounds. In practice the process is tough and often lengthy, but it exists and leads to the desired outcome, as numerous successful cases demonstrate.

Italy: courts open the way

Since 2026, Italy has been demonstrating another route that does not require a major legislative reform. The Administrative Court (TAR) of Pescara ruled in judgment No. 254/2026 that a landowner may prohibit hobby hunting on their own land on ethical grounds. The region may reject such an application only if it objectively demonstrates that this particular plot of land is indispensable to the objectives of the regional wildlife and hunting plan. In doing so, the court relied expressly on the same Strasbourg case law that has already been handed down against France, Luxembourg and Germany. The route is remarkable: not through a new statutory exemption rule as in Germany, but through the consistent interpretation of the existing hunting act (Art. 15 of Law No. 157/1992). More on this in the article Italy: court allows hunting ban on one's own land on ethical grounds.

Austria: adhering to the existing legal situation

To date, Austria has adhered to the existing legal situation. In October 2017, the Austrian Constitutional Court confirmed that landowners must continue to tolerate hunting on their land and membership in a hunting cooperative, even against their ethical convictions. Withdrawing from a hunting cooperative on grounds of conscience is not possible in Austria. Affected owners have therefore lodged a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights, relying on precisely that case law which has already been handed down against France, Luxembourg and Germany.

Switzerland: the law is in place, but the will is lacking

As a contracting state, Switzerland is bound by the same European Convention on Human Rights as France, Luxembourg and Germany. Under the Court's current interpretation of the ECHR, no one should have to tolerate hobby hunting on their own land if they reject it on ethical grounds. At the same time, Switzerland has a particularly direct lever: since hunting law is regulated at cantonal level and federal law obliges no canton to introduce hobby hunting, a cantonal decision sufficed in Geneva. What is lacking is not the legal basis, but the political will to grant private forest owners the right to have their land exempted from hunting for ethical reasons.

Buying forest as a quiet act of wildlife protection

This is where the circle closes. Anyone who buys forest in order to protect it thinks first of trees, of old-growth timber, of biodiversity. The logical next step is to also make this forest a hunting-free zone. In Germany this is already possible today, Austria still blocks it, and in Switzerland only the political will is lacking to implement a long-recognised right. Ownership entails obligations, it is said. But it can also empower: to a piece of land on which wild animals can finally find peace.

Editorial comment: The European Court of Human Rights has unequivocally established in three rulings against three states that a person may reject killing on their own land. That Austria continues to compel its citizens to tolerate hobby hunting, and that Switzerland withholds this right from its landowners, is an anachronism that ought to be corrected politically.

From the forest to a political lever

Anyone in Switzerland who owns forest and wants to keep it hunting-free is not dependent on the goodwill of individual authorities, but can take a political route. The IG Wild beim Wild provides a ready-made template text for this purpose, intended to give landowners the right to exempt their land from hunting for ethical reasons, explicitly analogous to regulations in several EU states and the Geneva model. In this way, a private question of conscience becomes a cantonal motion that parliamentarians, parties and committed private individuals can submit directly.

Take action now

• Template text: hunting-free private forest, exemption on ethical grounds
• All template texts for hunting-critical motions in cantonal parliaments

Read more at wildbeimwild.com

• Hobby hunting and human rights in Switzerland
• Two woodland plots in Hildesheim officially hunting-free
• Couple wins lawsuit: plot in Siegsdorf hunting-free from 2022