Federal Act on Forest
(Forest Act, ForA)

¹ De­for­est­a­tion is pro­hib­ited.

² In ex­cep­tion­al cases a de­for­est­a­tion per­mit may be gran­ted if the ap­plic­ant proves that there are im­port­ant reas­ons for the de­for­est­a­tion that out­weigh the in­terest of forest con­ser­va­tion and, fur­ther­more, the fol­low­ing con­di­tions are ful­filled:

a.

the pro­posed site must be es­sen­tial to the works for which the de­for­est­a­tion is to be car­ried out;

b.

the works must es­sen­tially ful­fil the spa­tial plan­ning re­quire­ments;

c.

the de­for­est­a­tion does cause any ser­i­ous threat to the en­vir­on­ment.

³ Im­port­ant reas­ons do not in­clude fin­an­cial in­terests, such as the po­ten­tially prof­it­able use of the land or the low-cost ac­quis­i­tion of land for non-forestry pur­poses.

^3bis If the au­thor­it­ies have to de­cide wheth­er to grant per­mis­sion for the con­struc­tion of in­stall­a­tions for the gen­er­a­tion of re­new­able en­er­gies and for en­ergy trans­port­a­tion and dis­tri­bu­tion, when weigh­ing up in­terests the na­tion­al in­terest in con­struct­ing such in­stall­a­tions is to be con­sidered equal to oth­er na­tion­al in­terests.⁴

⁴ The pro­tec­tion of nature and cul­tur­al her­it­age must be taken in­to ac­count.

⁵ A time lim­it shall be set for de­for­est­a­tion per­mits.