1895, the canton acquired the Le Pré aux Boeuf farm and converted it into a boys boarding school. In 1931 they converted the school into a home for people in need. Geography Sonvilier has an area of . Of this area, or 60.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 34.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 4.5% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.1% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 2.4% and transportation infrastructure made up 1.9%. Out of the forested land, 28.1% of the total land area is heavily forested and 6.2% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 3.1% is used for growing crops and 34.5% is pastures and 23.1% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality is located above the Suze river valley in the Bernese Jura. It consists of the haufendorf village (an irregular, unplanned and quite closely packed village, built around a central square) of Sonvilier, the hamlet of La Chaux-d'Abel as well as scattered farm houses on the slopes of the Montagne du Droit and the Montagne de l'Envers. On 31 December 2009 District de Courtelary, the municipality's former district, was dissolved. On the following day, 1 January 2010, it joined the newly created Arrondissement administratif Jura bernois. Coat of arms The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Gules a Banderole Argent in bend. Demographics Sonvilier has a population () of . , 9.8% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (2000-2010) the population has changed at a rate of 9.7%. Migration accounted for 4.7%, while births and deaths accounted for 6.2%. Most of the population () speaks French (889 or 76.8%) as their first language, German is the second most common (205 or 17.7%) and Italian is the third (22 or 1.9%). There is 1 person who speaks Romansh. , the population was 51.9% male and 48.1% female. The population was made up of 540 Swiss men (45.8% of the population) and 72 (6.1%) non-Swiss men. There were 524 Swiss women (44.4%) and 44 (3.7%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality, 365 or about 31.5% were born in Sonvilier and lived there in 2000. There were 299 or 25.8% who