The BNatSchG 2002 consists of 10 sections.

The first section (§§ 1 to 11) contains general guidelines regarding the goals and principles of protecting nature, the obligation for developing a habitat linkage, the relation between protecting nature and agriculture, forestry and fishery, and the respective purviews of the implementing authorities.  Furthermore, in § 10 the leading concepts of the law protecting nature are legally defined.

The following four sections contain rules facilitating the implementation of the above mentioned nature protection goals. These guidelines pertain to environmental observation, landscape planning (section 2, §§ 12 to 17), rules governing operations encroaching upon nature (section 3, §§ 18 to 21), area conservation, including the implementation of the goals laid down by European law as the FFH directive, and the directive for the protection of birds (section 4, §§ 22 – 38) and rules governing species protection (section 5, §§ 39 – 55).

The remaining sections contain rules on recreation in the natural landscape (section 6, §§ 56 – 57), the involvement of societies in nature protection (section 7, §§ 58 – 61), supplementary rules (section 8, §§ 62 – 64), fines and penal law (section 9, §§ 65 bis 68) and final clauses (section 10, §§ 69 bis 71).