Crown Land: Indicators and Statistics - Ministry of Forests

how much of the lands in some of the early Crown
grants have reverted to the Crown, particularly in
some of the railway grants made in the early 1900s
in the Kootenays. 7 When considered at the provincial
level however, this level of uncertainty is quite small.
Federal lands are Crown lands, the administration
of which has been transferred to the Federal
government by the provincial government.
These lands are effectively owned by the federal
government and, in most cases, can be sold by them.
The total area of federal lands in BC is approximately
1,070,000 hectares.
Treaty settlement lands are transfers of land by
the provincial government to First Nations under
the terms of specific treaties. The total area of treaty
settlement lands in BC is approximately 227,000
hectares.
7 The initial grants were recorded, as were the survey details on
the land titles for land parcels which reverted to the Crown;
however summary statistics for reversions were not always
recorded. Some miscellaneous categories of federal lands also
have associated uncertainty.
Table 3 Regional Distribution of Land Ownership in British Columbia (hectares)
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Cariboo
Sub-Region
The provincial Crown land base is 88,740,000
hectares, which constitutes approximately 93.8% of
the BC land base. Again, there is a small amount of
uncertainty when estimating this figure due to the
inconsistent historical records of private lands that
reverted to the Crown. 8
Table 3 shows the distribution of the four land
ownership categories by natural resource sector
ministry sub-region. Private land is not distributed
evenly across the province: the highest proportions
of private land ownership are in the West Coast
(9.4%), Kootenay (8.7%) and Thompson-Okanagan
(7.9%) sub-regions.
8 Varying estimates of the percentage of provincial Crown land
(between 92% and 95%) have been reported by various
provincial agencies over the last fifteen years. Most of this
variation is due to differences in the definition of the BC land
base, and whether or not some marine and freshwater areas
were included in the denominator of the estimate calculations.
For the purposes of this report, marine areas have been excluded
and freshwater areas have been included in the estimate.
Federal 1,2 43,000 159,000 449,000 22,000 23,000 47,000 99,000 228,000 1,070,000
Provincial 3 7,750,000 6,636,000 7,091,000 15,367,000 16,591,000 23,825,000 3,833,000 7,647,000 88,740,000
Treaty 4 0 0 0 0 0 201,000 1,000 25,000 227,000
Private 5 458,000 656,000 689,000 413,000 887,000 227,000 308,000 970,000 4,608,000
Total 8,251,000 7,451,000 8,229,000 15,802,000 17,501,000 24,301,000 4,241,000 8,870,000 94,646,000
1. Includes long term transfers of administration and control to the federal government under the Land Act (see Section 5.2, Historical
Tenures and Grants).
2. Source: National Parks and Indian Reserves – GeoBC Geographic Warehouse; Other – BC Land Statistics, 1996 and MFLNRO updates.
3. Calculated by subtracting federal, private land and treaty settlement lands from the total land base in each region.
4. Source: GeoBC Geographic Warehouse.
5. Source: Crown Land Registry.
Thompson-
Okanagan
Kootenay
Omineca
Peace
Skeena
South Coast
West Coast
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Ministry of
Forests, Lands and
Natural Resource Operations
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