Crown Land: Indicators and Statistics - Ministry of Forests

Discussion
Industries directly associated with the forestry,
utilities and pipelines, energy, and mining sectors are
the most heavily dependent on Crown land. Public
recreation and environmental management activities
also occur primarily on Crown land, but are not
typically treated as economic sectors. 20
Most of the sectors that are highly dependent on
Crown land utilize a mixture of land tenured under
the Land Act and rights authorised under other acts.
These sectors include forestry, mining, environment,
public recreation, and agriculture and agriculturerelated
activities. For the energy sector and a few
others, all land tenures are issued exclusively under
the Land Act. Variations in sector dependence on
Crown land are detailed below:
20 This is because they very largely involve goods and services
that are not traded in traditional markets and are not therefore
included in national account measures like GDP.
Agriculture sector and related activities
Approximately 10% to 15% of agriculture,
aquaculture, fishing, hunting and trapping activity is
directly dependent on Crown land; however, there
is significant variability between the sub-sectors of
these activities. For instance, approximately 9% of
intensive crop production, 21 3% of extensive crop
production, 22 and 8% of animal production occurs
on provincial Crown land.
Within animal production, the beef sub-sector is
moderately dependent on Crown land at around 40%,
but others such as dairying and hogs utilize much
less Crown land. Meanwhile aquaculture is almost
completely dependent on Crown land (through
ocean floor tenures). Freshwater fishing, hunting
and trapping rely on a mix of Land Act tenures, along
with licensing requirements for fishing and wildlife
management issued under the Wildlife Act. 23
Overall, around 12% of the sector’s activity relies on
Land Act and other Crown land tenures.
Forestry sector
In BC, 98% of forest land and 96% of the
timber harvesting land base are on Crown land.
Approximately 95% of forest production and 40% of
log handling and storage activities (prior to milling
activities), occur on Crown land. Log handling and
storage account for 2% of forestry sector activity and
consequently around 90% of overall sector activity
is directly dependent on Crown land (see Section
3.7, Economic Activity on Crown Land for more
information on these sub-sector shares).
Most forest production occurs on Crown land tenured
under the Forest Act, while most log handling and
storage sites on Crown land are tenured under the
Land Act.
21 Such as pome, stone, berry and other fruit crops and
floriculture.
22 Such as cereal crops.
23 Salt water fishing also relies on Land Act tenured docks and
marinas but these are covered under the Transportation and
Communications sector.
Ministry of
Forests, Lands and
Natural Resource Operations
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