Federal Act
on the Protection of Nature and Cultural Heritage
(NCHA)¹

¹ The Con­fed­er­a­tion may sup­port nature pro­tec­tion, cul­tur­al her­it­age pro­tec­tion and monu­ment pre­ser­va­tion by provid­ing the can­tons with glob­al fin­an­cial as­sist­ance with­in the scope of the au­thor­ised cred­its and on the basis of pro­gramme agree­ments for the pre­ser­va­tion, ac­quis­i­tion, up­keep, in­vest­ig­a­tion and doc­u­ment­a­tion of land­scapes, sites of loc­al char­ac­ter, his­tor­ic­al sites, or nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al monu­ments de­serving pro­tec­tion.

² By way of ex­cep­tion, it may provide fin­an­cial as­sist­ance by means of a rul­ing for pro­jects that re­quire an in­di­vidu­al as­sess­ment by the Con­fed­er­a­tion.

³ The amount of the fin­an­cial as­sist­ance is de­term­ined by the im­port­ance of the site to be pro­tec­ted and the ef­fect­ive­ness of the meas­ures.

⁴ Fin­an­cial as­sist­ance shall be provided only if the meas­ures are cost-ef­fect­ive and are car­ried out pro­fes­sion­ally.

5 The pro­tec­tion and up­keep meas­ures ordered con­sti­tute pub­lic-law re­stric­tions on the use of prop­erty (Art. 702 Civil Code⁴²). They are bind­ing on the landown­er con­cerned and must be re­cor­ded in the land re­gister on ap­plic­a­tion by the can­ton. Ex­emp­tions from this ob­lig­a­tion are de­term­ined by the Fed­er­al Coun­cil.