Roughly 94% of British Columbia's land base is provincial Crown land, about 5% is private and around 1% is federal. With odds like that it's tempting to assume any patch of bush is public. The catch is where the other 6% sits: valley bottoms, lakeshores, river flats, the land along highways, and big blocks of private forest on Vancouver Island. Those are exactly the places people most want to camp. This guide covers how to tell what you're standing on, which official tools answer which question, and a worked check you can repeat anywhere in the province.
What "Crown land" means in BC
Crown land is land, or an interest in land, vested in the provincial government. That includes "aquatic Crown land" below the high water mark of lakes, rivers and the sea. The province administers it under the Land Act, and lets the public use it for low-impact recreation through a policy called the Permission. Our camping rules guide covers that policy in detail.
Being Crown land is necessary but not enough. The Permission doesn't apply inside parks, protected areas, ecological reserves and conservancies, Wildlife Management Areas, municipalities, leases, federal land, conservation reserves, closed or application-only areas, or anywhere posted against the activity. It also doesn't let you interfere with someone else's tenure. So the real question has two parts: is it Crown land, and is anything sitting on top of it?
The land that isn't Crown land
Private land, including private forest
Most private land in BC is the obvious kind: farms, ranches, rural lots and cabins, concentrated in the Lower Mainland, the Okanagan, the Peace and the valley bottoms of the Interior. The less obvious kind is private managed forest land. Much of eastern Vancouver Island, from around Victoria north past Campbell River, is privately owned forest that came out of a 19th-century railway land grant. It looks exactly like Crown forest from the road. Access there is set by the landowner, not the province. Gates may be locked for fire season or operations, and the province has said it has no jurisdiction over public access to those lands. Some companies run access programs for hunters, anglers or specific recreation sites, so check the landowner's current rules.
Reserves, treaty lands and Aboriginal title
Reserves under the Indian Act are not Crown land open to the public. BC's hunting regulations put it bluntly: reserves are private land, and you need permission from the band office to hunt on or cross them. Modern treaty settlement lands, such as Nisga'a Lands in the Nass Valley and the treaty lands of the Tsawwassen, Maa-nulth and Tla'amin nations, are owned and governed by those nations under their treaties. In 2014 the Supreme Court of Canada declared Aboriginal title to a defined area of Tsilhqot'in territory in the South Chilcotin. The Tsilhqot'in Nation controls access to the title lands, and the provincial hunting synopsis says that area is treated the same as private land and is not open to public hunting. Across the rest of the province, First Nations' rights and title interests can affect how Crown land is managed. Treat any community, reserve or treaty boundary as "ask first".
Federal land
National parks (Pacific Rim, Gulf Islands, Gwaii Haanas, Glacier, Mount Revelstoke, Yoho and Kootenay), National Wildlife Areas, military areas and other federal land follow federal rules. The provincial Permission doesn't apply there.
Crown land with someone else's interest on it
A lot of Crown land is under some kind of tenure. Some tenures have no effect on you, some change what you can do, and some mean you shouldn't be there at all.
- Leases (cabins, commercial lodges, some agricultural and industrial uses): the Permission doesn't apply. Treat a leased lot like private property.
- Grazing tenures: open range is common in the Interior, and you'll share roads with cattle. You may not hunt on Crown land under a grazing lease while livestock are on it without the lessee's consent, and the Trespass Act applies to leased land whether or not cattle are present. Leave gates the way you found them.
- Forestry: cutblocks and haul roads are a fact of life on BC Crown land. Active operations may close roads or areas for safety, and those closures are posted.
- Mineral claims and placer claims: a claim gives rights to minerals, not to keep the public off the surface, but active work sites are hazards and often posted.
- Trapline and guide cabins: the hunting synopsis is clear that cabins you find in the bush belong to someone running a legitimate business. They're not to be entered, damaged or disturbed.
- Recreation sites: Crown land, but managed by Recreation Sites and Trails BC under their own posted rules.
The official tools, and what each one answers
| Tool | Who runs it | Use it to answer |
|---|---|---|
| ParcelMap BC | Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA) | Where legal parcel boundaries are, and whether a parcel is titled (private) or Crown. A full title search through myLTSA costs a fee. |
| iMapBC | Province of BC | A free web map that layers parcels, parks, tenures, forestry roads and hundreds of other provincial datasets. |
| NRS Explore map | Natural Resource Online Services | Recommended by the Permission policy for spotting tenures, reserves and other interests on Crown land. |
| Integrated Land and Resource Registry (ILRR) | Province of BC | Searching the registered interests (tenures, reserves, notations) on a specific piece of Crown land. |
| FrontCounter BC | Province of BC, 1-877-855-3222 | A person to ask, and the local district office for a specific area. |
| BC Parks website | BC Parks | Park boundaries, camping and backcountry rules, closures, and whether hunting is allowed in a given park. |
| Recreation Sites and Trails BC website | RSTBC | Recreation site details, fees, road access notes and closures. |
| BC Wildfire Service | Province of BC | Current fire bans, area restrictions and evacuation orders. |
How to read our map
Our British Columbia map draws two provincial open datasets. The first is BC Parks' boundaries for provincial parks, ecological reserves, protected areas and recreation areas, shown in purple, teal, green and gold. The second is Recreation Sites and Trails BC's polygons for recreation sites, recreation reserves and interpretive forests, shown in blue.
What it doesn't draw matters just as much. Plain Crown land has no colour, because it's the background: most of the unshaded province is Crown land. But private land, reserves, treaty lands, leases, municipalities and Wildlife Management Areas aren't shaded either. In the backcountry of the north coast or the Cariboo plateau, unshaded usually means Crown land. On a lakeshore near Kelowna, along the Fraser Valley or on eastern Vancouver Island, unshaded often means private. Use our map to find candidates, then confirm.
A worked check: a lake off a forest road north of Kamloops
Say you've spotted a small lake on the plateau north of Kamloops. It's a short drive up a Forest Service Road, with no park colour around it, and you'd like to camp on the shore for a long weekend. Here's the check, in order.
- Start on our map. No park or ecological reserve covers the lake. A blue polygon on one end means a recreation site, so its posted rules will apply there, and you can camp elsewhere on the shore only if that's Crown land.
- Check ownership in ParcelMap BC or iMapBC. Turn on the parcel layer. If titled lots ring part of the shoreline, those are private, and so is any lane through them. On the plateau, the land beyond them is often untitled Crown land.
- Check for tenures. In the NRS Explore map or iMapBC, look for leases (cabins and lodges are common on Interior lakes), grazing tenures and reserves. Range cattle on the shore mean a grazing tenure: fine to camp near, but leave gates and water sources alone.
- Check you're outside a municipality and any WMA. Kamloops' city limits extend well beyond the urban area. If you're inside, municipal bylaws apply and the Permission doesn't.
- Check the road. Read the sign at the road entrance for the RR channel and any active hauling notice, and look up the recreation site's page for access notes.
- Check fire restrictions for the Kamloops Fire Centre on the day you leave.
- Check fishing rules. Look the lake up in the Region 3 (Thompson-Nicola) section of the freshwater synopsis. Many small Interior lakes are stocked and have their own quotas, bait bans or motor restrictions. Our fishing guide covers the province-wide rules.
If any step is unclear, FrontCounter BC can route you to the district office that manages the area. Calling ahead takes five minutes. Getting moved along at 10 p.m. takes much longer.
Signs, gates and common sense
The Permission says Crown land, including private roads, that's posted or signed against an activity is excluded. Respect signage even when it looks old. A locked gate on a resource road may be a fire-season or wildlife closure, or a sign that the road crosses private land. Don't drive around it. When a source and our map disagree, the source wins. Tell us through the contact page and we'll fix it.
Once you've found your spot, the guide to parks, protected areas and recreation sites explains what each coloured area on the map lets you do, and the Crown land by city pages show what's close to Vancouver, Kelowna, Prince George and other towns.
Sources
Last reviewed: October 2026. Regulations change; always confirm with the official source before you go.
- Province of BC – Land Use Policy: Permission
- Province of BC – Crown land policies
- Land Title and Survey Authority – ParcelMap BC
- Province of BC – iMapBC
- Province of BC – Integrated Land and Resource Registry
- Province of BC – 2026-2028 Hunting and Trapping Regulations Synopsis (reserves, grazing leases, cabins)