Campground regulations and penalties
Taiwan has no single campground law. Which land may be used, what must be filed, and what each violation costs are spread across the Campground Management Guidelines and the land-use, agriculture, soil-conservation and water-pollution statutes. This page collects the parts with an official text to point at; each item links to the government source. Where there is no text to cite, nothing is written.
The framework: Campground Management Guidelines
The Tourism Administration's Campground Management Guidelines (露營場管理要點, an administrative rule, latest version 4 June 2025) is the only instrument written specifically for campgrounds. It ranks below an act: it says how to apply, what to attach and what operators must do, but contains no penalties — those come from the underlying statutes.
- Definition (point 2): a place that provides camping facilities to the public for a fee. 露營區, 露營地 and 營地 all mean the same thing.
- Competent authority (point 3): the municipal or county government. Sites inside national parks, national scenic areas, forest recreation areas, leisure farms or amusement enterprises follow their own regulator.
- Permitted land (point 5): in urban plans — camping zones, protection zones and other zones per their own rules; outside urban plans — Class C building land, recreation land, agricultural/pastoral land, forestry land; national parks; leisure farms set up under the leisure-agriculture regulations.
- Farm or forest land under one hectare (point 7): the whole site must be under 1 ha; only pitches, sanitary facilities (and on farmland an office) are allowed, together no more than 10% of the site and at most 660 m²; height limit 4 m on farmland, 3 m on forestry land; not inside first-grade environmentally sensitive areas (disaster, ecological, resource types) or second-grade disaster areas (debris-flow torrents, sea-wall bodies); at least one existing access road wide enough for fire and ambulance vehicles. Sites of 1 ha or more must go through a change of land use or zoning under the Regional Plan Act.
- Registration documents (point 9): land register and cadastral map, title deed or consent to use, facility layout (existing buildings need proof of lawful use), public liability insurance contract, soil-and-water-conservation completion certificate on slopeland and in forest zones, urban-planning authority letter for urban land, land-use permit for farm/forest land, national-park permit, water-authority consent in sea-wall areas, geological-sensitivity query result, evacuation-facility proof in flood zones, and so on. After a document check the county convenes agriculture, soil conservation, land, planning, construction, fire, environment and water agencies for an on-site inspection (point 10).
- Operators must disclose (point 14): the responsible person and business registration, fees and refund rules, the insurer, amount and term of public liability cover, emergency numbers and site rules (opening hours, layout, escape routes, waste, noise), vehicle access routes, accessibility facilities. An emergency response, first-aid and evacuation plan must be published online (point 15).
- Minimum insurance (point 16): NT$3 million per person injured, NT$15 million per incident for injury, NT$2 million per incident for property, NT$34 million aggregate per policy term.
- Publication (points 11 and 19): approved registrations are published on the "campground inventory platform of the competent authorities", and inspection and enforcement results are updated there too. That platform is the upstream of this site's data.
The Tourism Administration's inventory platform page also carries an application guide, an FAQ, county contact points and by-laws, the list of campgrounds in violation and the count of existing campgrounds inside environmentally sensitive areas (updated on the 1st and 16th of each month).
What each violation means and costs
Only the acts that appear most often in this site's data and have a penalty clause to cite. Amounts are the statutory range; actual fines are set by the county. The dataset has no field saying whether any site has been fined, so this site cannot and does not say so.
| Act | As written in the data | The problem | Penalty (official text) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Regional Plan Act | 區域計畫法, 非都市土地使用管制規則 | Non-urban land used contrary to its zoning and land-use class (art. 15) | Art. 21: NT$60,000–300,000, with orders to change or stop the use or demolish structures; non-compliance brings repeated fines, cut-off of water and power, closure or forced demolition. |
| Agricultural Development Act | 農業發展條例, 農發條例 | Farmland used without permitted-use approval or change; or a leisure farm run without a permit | Art. 70: operating a leisure farm without a permit, NT$60,000–300,000 with a deadline to correct, then repeated fines. |
| Soil and Water Conservation Act | 水土保持法 | Slopeland or forest developed, run or used without consent | Art. 32: where soil loss or damage to conservation works results, 6 months to 5 years' imprisonment and a fine of up to NT$600,000; heavier if death or serious injury follows. |
| Water Pollution Control Act | (almost absent from the data, new since 2025) | Flush-toilet and domestic wastewater from campgrounds not collected and treated, or no treatment facility of sufficient capacity | Ministry of Environment notice "Prohibited acts liable to pollute water", amended 16 January 2024; fines of NT$30,000–3,000,000 under art. 52 with a deadline to improve; in force and enforced from 1 March 2025 (originally July 2024, postponed to give operators time). |
| Urban Planning Act, Building Act, Forestry Act, National Park Act | same names | Urban land use not in line with the plan; unpermitted or illegal structures; forest land; inside a national park | Handled under each act; fewer than a hundred sites in the data together, not itemised here. |
Why nine in ten are in violation
Background, not data. Of the 1,604 sites recorded as in violation, more than seven in ten cite the Regional Plan Act, land-use control or the Agricultural Development Act — all of them the land may not be used this way. Two routes to compliance exist: farm or forest land under one hectare can apply under point 7 of the Guidelines (but only 10%, at most 660 m², may carry facilities, which caps the number of pitches); one hectare or more needs a change of zoning; slopeland needs a soil-and-water-conservation plan first. Which route costs what, and why operators do not take it, is a policy debate on which this site takes no side; point 4 of the Guidelines also lets counties cap the total number of sites.
Environmentally sensitive areas
The Tourism Administration publishes a count of existing campgrounds inside environmentally sensitive areas, updated on the 1st and 16th of each month. When this page was checked (2026-08-21) the total was 20 (Yilan 2, Nantou 5, Miaoli 7, Kaohsiung 4, Yunlin 1, New Taipei 1); counties not listed have none inside the 19 sensitive-area types. The figure moves; the official page is authoritative. The "over a hundred inside sensitive areas" often quoted online is an earlier survey, not the current state.
What the data does not contain
- Whether a site has been fined, or how much — no such field.
- Site boundary, area or number of pitches — a single coordinate only.
- Whether insurance and disclosure duties are actually met — visible only on site or on the operator's own page.
The legal texts linked above are authoritative; laws change, and this page reflects the versions current when it was compiled (2026-08-21).