Wild camping in Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden

This is the shortest article in our canton series, and that is the finding. Appenzell Ausserrhoden's law collection contains not a single provision on camping, tenting or bivouacking. We searched the whole of it to be able to write that sentence.

The canton says nothing at all. A full-text search of the entire Ausserrhoden collection returns zero hits for campieren, zelten and Biwak.1 Camping appears only as a zoning word in the building law and as a taxable bed in the tourism law. Your night here is decided by the commune you are in, by the landowner, and by the federal game reserve Säntis where it reaches.2

A verified zero, not a guess

We ran the search terms through the whole cantonal collection: campieren, zero hits. Zelten, zero. Biwak, zero. The word Camping appears in exactly two places, and neither restricts you: the building law and its ordinance treat campgrounds as a zoning category, and the tourism law counts campground nights for the guest tax.1 There is no general rule, no protected-area camping clause at cantonal level, no fixed-penalty item.

That puts Ausserrhoden in the most silent group of our canton comparison, alongside Vaud. Silence is not the same as permission for any specific meadow, because the ground still belongs to someone and the commune can still have written a rule. But it does mean nobody can point at a cantonal ban, because there is none to point at.

What actually decides

Three things. The commune: Ausserrhoden has twenty of them and we have not enumerated their police regulations, so treat a village-adjacent pitch as an open question rather than a cleared one. The landowner: most usable ground on the Alpstein flank is farmed alp, and the short conversation with the farmer is both polite and legally the cleanest route. And the federal layer: the game reserve Säntis reaches Ausserrhoden ground on the Schwägalp side, where free tenting and camping is a federal offence at CHF 150 that no consent can lift.23

How to check the federal perimeters before you go is in our protected areas article. For the massif itself, the practical companion is our Alpstein article; the tolerance culture described there is an Innerrhoden story, so read the AI canton page for that side of the border.

How it plays out

One published spot touches Ausserrhoden ground so far, and it shows the one layer that does bite here.

  • SchwägalpReport

    The Schwägalp at the Säntis valley station lies inside federal game reserve no. 16 Säntis, whose object sheet records the whole reserve as integrally protected. CHF 150 under federal law, and no landowner can permit it away.

Somewhere else in Appenzell Ausserrhoden?

Put it into the wild camping check. With a silent canton, the answer lives in the commune, the parcel and the federal perimeter, and those are spot-level questions.

Is wild camping allowed in Appenzell Ausserrhoden?
The canton neither allows nor bans it: its collection contains no camping provision at all. A considerate single night needs the landowner on side and a commune without its own rule, and it must stay outside the federal game reserve Säntis. There is no cantonal fine because there is no cantonal offence.
What is the difference to Appenzell Innerrhoden?
Innerrhoden has a camping ordinance that allows occasional camping with the landowner's consent, a repealed penalty regime and a stated bivouac tolerance. Ausserrhoden has none of that: no ordinance, no tolerance statement, nothing. In practice both cantons run on the landowner conversation; only Innerrhoden wrote it down.
What can a fine cost here?
At cantonal level nothing, because no offence exists. Inside the federal game reserve Säntis, CHF 150 under federal law. A commune with its own police regulation can fine under that regulation; we have not enumerated the twenty communes, so check locally where it matters.

Sources

  1. Canton Appenzell Ausserrhoden, systematic law collection, full-text search of the entire collection: campieren 0 hits, zelten 0 hits, Biwak 0 hits. "Camping" appears only in the Baugesetz (bGS 721.1) and Bauverordnung (721.11) as a zoning category and in the Tourismusgesetz (955.21, with ordinance 955.213) for the guest tax. No cantonal norm restricts camping outside campsites. ar.clex.ch. ↩
  2. Verordnung über die eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebiete (VEJ, SR 922.31), Art. 5 Abs. 1 lit. e: "Das freie Zelten und Campieren ist verboten. Vorbehalten bleibt die Benutzung offizieller Zeltplätze. Die Kantone können Ausnahmen bewilligen." Anhang 1 lists the game reserve Säntis (object no. 16), which reaches Ausserrhoden ground on the Schwägalp side. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩
  3. Ordnungsbussenverordnung (OBV), Anhang 2, Ziff. 12005: "Freies Zelten oder Campieren in eidgenössischen Jagdbanngebieten (Art. 18 Abs. 1 Bst. e und Abs. 3 JSG, Art. 5 Abs. 1 Bst. e VEJ)", CHF 150. Ziff. 12003 covers wildlife rest zones at the same amount. fedlex.admin.ch. ↩