Professional collecting

Numerous laws regulate collecting of living animals, plants and fungi. General federal laws regarding personal property (AGBG, Austrian constitution law, civil law) apply together with specific regulations like forestry law, animal protection act and the federal law on trade of species. Protection of plants and animals, as well as exceptions for collecting, is defined by the respective nature conservation acts of the federal provinces. For fish the provincial acts are primarily applicable. However, for game the game laws, which somehow overrule the nature conservation acts, apply. Additionally the provincial laws on the protection of caves must be considered. Likewise the provincial laws on installation and operation of national parks and other legal regulations on protected areas should be observed.

Collecting activities for ABOL must follow official regulations. Anybody intending to collect for ABOL should coordinate all procedures with the ABOL management or the respective project leaders (e.g. pilot studies, associated projects, clusters) in advance.

Collecting of wild animals and plants on private property should be agreed upon with property owners to avoid conflicts. In addition to the above-mentioned legal matters, the objectives and rules of CBD, Nagoya protocol and particularly the ABS EU regulations must be observed
http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/international/abs/legislation_en.htm.

An equivalent Austrian federal law is in preparation and will be linked and commented here as soon as it is published.
In our overview, the regulations for animals and plants/fungi are presented separately.

However, according to the individual configuration of provincial laws, overlaps exist which may lead to redundancies, which we did not exclude to retain the original contents.

An overview of the legal basis, together with some comments, can be found on the german page only -> link