The Federal Office for the Environment

The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) is the technical authority, which attends to the parks of national importance on behalf of the federal government.  

Specifically Bruno Stephan Walder is in charge of the section “landscapes of national importance”, which looks after the parks. Simone Remund heads the interdisciplinary parks team.

The FOEN

• advises and accompanies the cantons and the park sponsorships during the development of their projects,
• prepares guidelines, reference books and further documents,
• checks the applications and the basics (landscape evaluation, management plan, Charta, etc.),
• awards the label “candidate” for the establishment phase and the label “park of national importance” for the operating phase,
• concludes a program agreement with the cantons for each park and
• determines the level of financial support.