Tierschutz#

Protection of animals: Under Austrian law animals are seen as property and the infliction of damage and the killing of an animal without the consent of the owner is damage to property. However, several provincial laws pay due regard to animals as living beings and forbid cruelty to animals, exploitation and maltreatment and threaten offenders with administrative penal proceedings; humane slaughtering is legally provided for. In 1992 Austria signed the European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes, which aims at introducing minimum standards for keeping farm animals (especially in confinement-type husbandry) and which makes binding provisions for the proper treatment and keeping of all animals (species-appropriate animal husbandry). Implementation is within the remit of the individual provinces.

Hunting and fishing fall within the jurisdiction of the provinces, which not only determine the amount of fish and game to be caught and hunted but also the methods of fishing and hunting and also the duration of the close season. Regulations concerning hunting and poaching, which contained certain provisions for the protection of animals, were first issued in the 18th and 19th centuries. The first law on the protection of birds was passed in Styria in 1868 (a similar law had been passed in Galicia as early as 1854), other Austrian provinces followed later (Lower Austria in 1889). The legal protection of individual species began after 1918 and has been embodied in the various laws on nature conservation. Protected animals in Austria are: all bats indigenous to Austria and most birds of prey, amphibians and reptiles.