Italy: Court allows hunting ban on one's own land for ethical reasons

In Italy, an administrative court has recognised for the first time that a landowner can have hobby hunting on their own land banned for ethical reasons.

The Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale (TAR) Pescara ruled, in judgment No. 254/2026, that an ethical rejection of hunting is a permissible ground for keeping hobby hunters off one's own property. The region may reject such an application only if it objectively demonstrates that withdrawing the specific plot of land would prevent the objectives of the regional wildlife and hunting plan.

Italy thus joins a development that has long been having an effect in several European countries, and to which we have already drawn attention on wildbeimwild.com: the right to keep one's own land free of hunting for reasons of conscience.

Five years of proceedings over a piece of land

It began with a citizen's application. In 2020, she requested the President of the Abruzzo region to prohibit the exercise of hunting on her own property, based on Article 15 paragraph 4 of the Italian hunting act No. 157/1992. The region's agriculture department rejected the request. A legal dispute followed that dragged on for around five years.

The rejection was based, among other things, on the argument that more than 30 per cent of the region's territory had already been withdrawn from hunting, which was deemed an immovable upper limit. Furthermore, ethical or scientific motives were not suitable to justify an exception under Article 15. The court rejected both assumptions.

Two central findings of the court

The judgment rests on two pillars. First, the court made clear that the 30 per cent limit of the regional territory withdrawn from hunting does not constitute an inviolable upper limit. The authority cannot therefore invoke, in blanket fashion, that the quota has been exhausted.

Secondly, and more fundamentally significant, the court recognised ethical and moral convictions as a legitimate ground for demanding an access ban for hobby hunters on one's own land. Should the region wish to reject such an application, it must set out in detail and objectively the extent to which this particular property is indispensable for achieving the objectives of the wildlife and hunting plan. The ethical motives must be duly taken into account in this process.

Editorial comment: Italy adds a further point to the European map of conscience protection. That a person may refuse killing on their own land is not an exotic special case, but a human rights standard. Switzerland continues to withhold this right from its landowners, even though a single political decision would suffice to grant it.

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The common thread: the case law from Strasbourg

What is decisive is what the Italian court invokes: the settled case law of the European Court of Human Rights. According to this, a landowner is not obliged to tolerate others hunting on their land if the hunting contradicts their personal and moral convictions. Since, in the Court's view, hunting predominantly serves leisure purposes, it must not become a disproportionate interference by third parties in the private sphere.

It is precisely the line that the Court drew in the cases of Chassagnou v. France, Schneider v. Luxembourg and Herrmann v. Germany. Italy is now taking its own path: not through a nationwide change in the law as Germany did, but through the administrative court's interpretation of the existing hunting act. The result is the same. Anyone who rejects hobby hunting on ethical grounds should not have to accept it on their own land.

What this means for Switzerland

As a contracting state, Switzerland is bound by the same European Convention on Human Rights as France, Luxembourg, Germany and Italy. The right to have one's own land freed from hunting on ethical grounds is grounded in human rights. What is lacking is solely the political will to implement it. The Italian ruling shows that this does not necessarily require a major legal reform, but that a consistent interpretation of the applicable law may already suffice.

Read more on wildbeimwild.com

• Buying forest and keeping it hunting-free: How private property becomes a protected zone for wild animals
• Hobby hunting and human rights in Switzerland
• More from the Animal Rights category