Zollikofen

Zollikofen is a municipality in the Bern-Mittelland administrative district in the Swiss canton of Bern. It is a suburb of the city of Bern. It is home to the Swiss College of Agriculture (SHL). Zollikofen has an area of . Of this area, or 44.3% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 12.6% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 42.1% is settled (buildings or roads), or 1.3% is either rivers or lakes. Of the developed area, industrial buildings made up 4.1% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 27.1% and transportation infrastructure made up 8.0%. while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 2.2%. Out of the forested land, 11.3% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.3% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 33.2% is used for growing crops and 10.4% is pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. On 31 December 2009 Amtsbezirk Bern, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Verwaltungskreis Bern-Mittelland. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Per fess Argent two Lions rampant combatant the dexter Gules maned Or and the sinister Sable crowned and collared Or langued and viriled Gules each holding a Tanner Knife Azure handled Or and Gules on a Bend Argent nine Box Leaves Vert. Zollikofen has a population () of . , 18.4% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000-2010) the population has changed at a rate of 6.1%. Migration accounted for 5.6%, while births and deaths accounted for 2.1%. Most of the population () speaks German (8,173 or 86.6%) as their first language, Italian is the second most common (266 or 2.8%) and French is the third (230 or 2.4%). There are 13 people who speak Romansh. the population was 48.6% male and 51.4% female. The population was made up of 3,820 Swiss men (38.9% of the population) and 956 (9.7%) non-Swiss men. There were 4,203 Swiss women (42.8%) and 852 (8.7%) non-Swiss women.