Soyhières

Soyhières is a municipality in the district of Delémont in the canton of Jura in Switzerland. Soyhières is first mentioned in 1102 as Sougere. In 1136 it was mentioned as Sohires and in 1212 as Sogron. The municipality was formerly known by its German name Saugern; however, that name is no longer used. Soyhières has an area of . Of this area, or 30.0% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 61.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 7.5% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.7% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.4% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.3% and transportation infrastructure made up 3.6%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.2% of the area Out of the forested land, 58.1% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3.6% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 10.9% is used for growing crops and 6.1% is pastures and 12.1% is used for alpine pastures. Of the water in the municipality, 0.3% is in lakes and 0.4% is in rivers and streams. The municipality is located in the Delemont district, on the banks of the Birs river. It consists of the village of Soyhières on the left bank of the Birs and the hamlet of Les Riedes-Dessus on the right. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Quartered Gules a Hare salient Argent and Azure a Wing sinister of the second. Soyhières has a population () of . , 15.3% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010) the population has changed at a rate of -5.9%. Migration accounted for -4.7%, while births and deaths accounted for 2%. Most of the population () speaks French (387 or 77.4%) as their first language, German is the second most common (86 or 17.2%) and Italian is the third (11 or 2.2%). the population was 48.4% male and 51.6% female. The population was made up of 191 Swiss men (39.7% of the population) and 42 (8.7%) non-Swiss men. There were 212 Swiss women (44.1%) and 36 (7.5%) non-Swiss women.