Has British Columbia already protected enough land to hit its conservation targets? The Association for Mineral Exploration is attempting to convince the province the answer is yes, based on a new analysis of publicly-available data it crunched on the issue.
Association president Todd Stone said the NDP government’s pledge to protect 30 per cent of the land base by 2030 has already been achieved, based on its own figures. If the province includes land where economic activity and mineral exploration are already limited, on top of existing parks and conservation areas, then B.C. actually sits at 47 per cent land protected, he said.
“What we’d like government to do is acknowledge and recognize it has already achieved its 30 by 30 objective, it truly has,” said Stone.
Roughly 15 per cent of B.C. is covered by parks, and combined with additional conservation measures the provincial government considers 20 per cent of the land base protected. It’s working on finding the remaining 10 per cent within the next five years.
AME says 47 per cent of land base has protections
The AME crunched other provincial data to add in internationally-designated “Other Effective Conservation Measures,” including almost 18 per cent ungulate winter ranges (habitats protected for species during the winter), as well as seven per cent designated for “ecosystem-based management,” two per cent for old growth protection, eight per cent for wildlife habitat areas, and more.
The association used mapping software to remove overlaps between those areas and existing provincial parks and conservation areas, to determine 46.99 per cent of the land base is protected or limited from development.
“Anyone who needs to access the land to do their jobs, you are effectively threatening the viability of those jobs.”
Todd Stone
Stone said the figure is important because it could allow the province to slow down its land protection ambitions and refocus on areas that won’t threaten its new goals to support expanded critical mineral mining efforts, which is based on prospecting and mineral exploration of the land base.
“All we’re saying is you can pick whatever definition you want, from the United Nations to anywhere else, as to what technically classifies as land being conserved, at the end of the day for the men and women and their families and communities that are engaged in exploration or any other resource sector for that matter.
“Anyone who needs to access the land to do their jobs, you are effectively threatening the viability of those jobs. And you certainly won’t be able to realize the grand ambitions that our prime minister and premier and their government have… to make British Columbia and Canada a leading mining and critical mineral jurisdiction in the world.”
Minister says more land needs to be protected
Premier David Eby has thrown his support behind expanded mining of critical minerals to combat American tariffs and help make Canada more self-reliant economically. He and Prime Minister Mark Carney have designated several mines as provincially and nationally significant, and pledged to fast-track them through permitting, such as upgrades to the Red Chris copper and gold mine near Dease Lake.
Carney has also pledged to create a “Northwest Critical Conservation Corridor,” which would pair mining expansion with B.C.’s proposed North Coast Transmission Line to electrify those projects, in combination with conservation areas set aside along the route from Prince George to Terrace and into the “Golden Triangle” mining region.
The NDP government doesn’t agree with AME’s new calculations.
“I do understand that we have to find a fit.”
Randene Neill
“Our numbers show we have just under 20 per cent protected, you ask environmental groups and they’ll say we have less than 15 per cent protected, so the number we use are the number of areas that are considered parks and full conservancies, full protected areas,” said Randene Neill, Minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.
She said the other effective conservation measured land AME used can include a Crown lease for cattle, for example, and don’t meet the province’s overall goals. “We don’t include that,” she said. “And those uses could also include forestry for example. We don’t include that as a protected area per say. But I do understand what they are saying, and I do understand that we have to find a fit. We can build our economy in a really good way, and we can also protect parts of our province in a really sustainable way.”
‘We’re running out of land’
Neill said the government plans to continue its modernized land use planning process in the northwest, to identify new conservation areas with local First Nations. But Stone said that has the potential to frustrate the mineral exploration that’s needed to help identify the next mines the province wants to develop to boost extracting critical minerals.
“Why this really matters is we can solve permitting timelines, we could provide maximum certainty in so many respects for mining and mineral exploration when it comes to raising capital, but if we don’t actually ensure explorers have access to land, and as much as possible, nothing else matters,” said Stone.
“Finding that world-class deposit and working it over for the five, 10, 15 or 20 years for it to become a producing mine, requires you to traverse a lot of land. And we’re running out of land bit by bit, which means explorers will have a harder time being viable long term.”
Neill said she thinks she can balance that with conservation efforts. But time, and the land base, is running out.