Kippel

Kippel is a municipality in the district of Raron in the canton of Valais in Switzerland. Kippel is first mentioned in 1437 as Kypil. Kippel has an area, , of . Of this area, or 23.4% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 35.3% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 1.7% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.8% is either rivers or lakes and or 38.9% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 0.8% and transportation infrastructure made up 0.4%. Out of the forested land, 30.6% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3.9% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 5.8% is pastures and 17.6% is used for alpine pastures. Of the water in the municipality, 0.3% is in lakes and 0.4% is in rivers and streams. Of the unproductive areas, 13.9% is unproductive vegetation, 23.8% is too rocky for vegetation and 1.2% of the land is covered by glaciers. The municipality is located in the Westlich Raron district, in the upper Lötschental valley. It is the largest of the villages of the Lötschental valley. The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules, a Saltire couped Argent between two Mullets of Five Or. Kippel has a population () of . , 2.9% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000–2010 ) the population has changed at a rate of -2.4%. It has changed at a rate of -9.2% due to migration and at a rate of -0.5% due to births and deaths. Most of the population () speaks German (365 or 99.2%) as their first language with the rest speaking French. the population was 50.3% male and 49.7% female. The population was made up of 183 Swiss men (49.5% of the population) and 3 (0.8%) non-Swiss men. There were 177 Swiss women (47.8%) and 7 (1.9%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 259 or about 70.4% were born in Kippel and lived there in 2000. There were 82 or 22.3% who were born in the same canton, while 19 or 5.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 7 or 1.9% were born outside of Switzerland.