Justice chancellor: State cannot take stock of nature without notifying the landowner

When the state sends an inventory taker to record the natural values on someone's land without notifying the owner, it comes across as acting behind the person's back. However, this should not be the case, Chancellor of Justice Ülle Madise reported to the Environmental Board.
Madise sent a letter to the head of the Environmental Board, Rainer Vakra, stating that she has received complaints from landowners who are concerned that the state does not notify them when it has ordered an inventory of their land.
As a result of the inventory, the state may decide to place the land under nature conservation or to make the existing protection regime stricter, thereby limiting property rights.
According to Madise, the general rule is that one can only be on someone else's property with the owner's permission, and this applies to the state as well. She pointed out that the law provides a certain exception for protected natural objects, but the permission given in the law for a representative of the state or the inventory taker to be on private land in a conservation area does not mean that notifying the owner is an unnecessary action.
"If the owner has marked or restricted their land, then outside of conservation areas, the landowner's consent is required for conducting an inventory anyway," she emphasized.
The justice chancellor stated that notifying the owner of an inventory taker's activities on the property would be in line with the principle of good administration as well as a sign of basic courtesy and respect. Treating the owner with dignity is also a primary condition for the owner to understand the actions of the state.
"The court has also deemed it important that property owners be notified if a habitat of a protected species is found and registered on their property," Madise said.
However, according to her, the Environmental Board has reportedly found notifying to be overly burdensome for the agency, and information has so far been published on the agency's website and in local newspapers.
"The volume of notifications may indeed be large, but it should also be considered that landowners who are not notified later submit inquiries to the Environmental Board about not being notified, and therefore the administrative burden may even increase. Therefore, I ask you to consider whether it might be possible to find a way to distribute more information about conducting inventories among landowners, considering the existing resources. It is important that a person does not feel like an object of administrative procedure," the chancellor wrote in her letter to the agency.
She added that the state must not act behind a person's back, but this is precisely how these actions might appear to a person if the state sends an inventory taker to record the natural values on their land without notifying the owner.
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Editor: Karin Koppel, Marcus Turovski