How to Find Crown Land in New Brunswick

In most of Canada, finding Crown land is easy and finding the private exceptions is the hard part. New Brunswick is the other way around. Forest covers about 85% of the province, but only about half of that forest belongs to the Crown. The rest is split between tens of thousands of private woodlot owners and forest companies that own large blocks of freehold land outright. A woods road that looks just like the last one can cross from public land to private and back without a sign in sight. This guide explains how land ownership works here, how to read our map, which official tools settle the question, and what to check on the ground.

Three kinds of forest

When people in New Brunswick talk about "the woods", they mean one of three things, and each comes with different rules.

Crown land is public land managed by the Department of Natural Resources. Most of it is forest licensed to companies for harvesting, but the licence covers the wood, not the land, and the public keeps its right to use it. Hiking, paddling, fishing, hunting and short-stay camping need no permission. Crown land is concentrated in the north and the central highlands: the Restigouche uplands, the country around Mount Carleton, the upper Miramichi and the forest between Plaster Rock and Bathurst.
Industrial freehold is forest owned outright by forest companies. It's private land. Many companies allow recreational use of their land and roads, but on their own terms: some gate roads during harvesting or fire season, some restrict vehicles, and their policies can change. If you're on freehold, you're there with the owner's consent, not by right.
Private woodlots are small and medium properties owned by individuals and families, from farm woodlots to hunting camps. Unposted woodlots aren't automatically closed to walkers, but the owner can post them, and asking first is both courteous and expected.

Near Moncton, Saint John and Fredericton, the land within half an hour is mostly private woodlots, farms and freehold. The large Crown blocks start further out. That's why our Crown land by city and region pages list distances: they show how far you have to drive before the yellow begins.

How our map shows it

New Brunswick publishes its Crown land boundaries as open data through GeoNB, so our map can draw Crown land directly. That makes it unusual: on most public-land maps, Crown land is the blank background, while here it's the yellow layer and the blank areas are mostly private.

Colour	Layer	What it tells you
Yellow	Crown land	Provincially owned land, from big forest blocks to small lots.
Purple	Provincial parks	Park rules apply: camp in the campground, no hunting.
Green	Protected Natural Areas	Class II allows low-impact use; Class I needs a permit to enter.
Teal	Conserved areas	Nature Legacy Crown land under conservation easement; Class II rules.
Unshaded	Everything else	Mostly private woodlots, freehold forest, farms and towns, plus national parks and reserves.

The yellow layer records ownership only. It doesn't show leases or licences on Crown land, and several kinds of lease change what you can do on the ground:

Camp lots: leased cottage and camp sites, often on lakeshores. The lease holder has the use of the lot.
Agricultural and wild blueberry leases: under the Trespass Act, agricultural land can't be entered without written consent, whether it's private or Crown.
Other leases and licences of occupation: docks, gravel pits, towers, commercial sites.

So a yellow parcel is where you start, not where you stop. If you find a fence, a crop, a building or a posted sign, the situation on the ground takes priority over the colour on the map.

Reading posted land

New Brunswick has a specific system for posting land, set out in the posting-of-signs regulation under the Fish and Wildlife Act. You'll see it on woodlots everywhere, so it's worth knowing:

Owners post with printed signs, 25-centimetre coloured disks, or 25-centimetre painted bands around trees.
Signs, disks or bands go at each corner and access point, and at least every 100 metres along the boundary.
Yellow disks or bands mean hunting, shooting, trapping or snaring by permission only.
Red disks or bands mean those activities are prohibited for everyone, the owner included.
Printed signs spell out what's covered ("No hunting", "No trapping" and so on) and whether it's banned or by permission.

It's illegal to remove, damage or cover a posted sign, disk or band. Note what posting does and doesn't cover: these signs are about hunting, trapping and shooting. Vehicles are dealt with by the Trespass Act, which makes it unlawful to drive on forest land posted against motor vehicle trespass, in a watercourse or marsh, or on a lake or ocean shore. Agricultural land needs written consent whether it's posted or not.

Shorelines, reserves and reserved roads

Water is where Crown and private land meet most often, and New Brunswick has some useful quirks.

Crown waterfront reserves are strips of Crown land along many lakes and rivers, between 20.1 and 60.4 metres deep. Even where the land behind is private, the strip by the water may be public. On the map, they appear as thin yellow bands along a shoreline.
Reserved roads are strips of land the Crown kept to give access to granted or Crown land. Some exist only on paper and some are real tracks.
The coast: the ordinary high-water mark is the boundary between waterfront property and Crown land. The foreshore below it is public; the land above it often isn't.

A waterfront reserve gives you a public strip, not a public route to it. If the only way in crosses private land, you need the owner's permission or a boat.

Official tools that settle the question

Our map is a planning tool built from the province's data. When you need a definitive answer, go to the source.

GeoNB Map Viewer (geonb.snb.ca): the province's own map portal. It shows property boundaries and parcel identifiers (PIDs) alongside Crown land and many other layers.
Service New Brunswick property records: with a PID from GeoNB you can look up a property's registered details through Service New Brunswick's online services.
GeoNB protected areas map (geonb.snb.ca/pna_znp/): Protected Natural Areas and other protected and conserved land.
Crown Lands Branch: 1-888-312-5600, Monday to Friday. They can tell you whether a parcel is Crown land and whether it's leased.
Natural Resources district offices: there are offices in Bathurst, Campbellton, Canterbury, Chipman, Dieppe, Doaktown, Edmundston, Florenceville, Fredericton, Hampton, Miramichi, Plaster Rock, Richibucto, St. George, Saint-Quentin, Sussex, Tracadie-Sheila and Welsford. Local staff know which roads are open, which are gated and where harvesting is under way.

A worked example: Oromocto Lake

Say you live in Fredericton and want a weekend tent site on Oromocto Lake, about 50 km southwest of the city, south of Harvey.

Open the map and zoom to the lake. Around it you'll see several large teal conserved areas, among them the Oromocto Lake area (about 4,285 hectares) and Piskahegan Stream (about 4,784 hectares), plus yellow Crown land in the surrounding uplands. Our Crown land near Oromocto Lake page lists them with distances.
Read the designations. The teal areas are Crown land protected by conservation easement. The province applies Class II rules there: short-term backcountry camping and fishing are allowed, and vehicles keep to authorized roads and trails.
Look at the shore. Cottages and camps along a lakeshore are usually private lots or leased camp lots, even when the map behind them is yellow or teal. Look for a stretch of shoreline with no buildings, or a spot back in the trees.
Check access. Find the road you'd drive in on. Is it a public road, a woods road on Crown land, or a road across freehold that might be gated? A call to the district office can save you a wasted trip.
Apply the camping rules. A tent can go near the water. A trailer has to stay 75 metres back. Pack everything out. The Crown land camping rules guide has the details.
Check fire and fishing rules. Look up the day's burn condition after 2 p.m. Oromocto Lake is stocked with landlocked salmon (2 a day, 35 to 63 cm fork length, May 1 to September 30) and is a managed smallmouth bass lake, where bass are release-only until June 30. The fishing guide explains where to find them.

The same steps work anywhere: find the yellow or teal, look for leases and buildings, confirm the road, then apply the rules.

Common mistakes

Assuming woods means Crown. Half the forest is private. Unless you've checked, assume you might be on someone's land.
Treating a company road as a public road. Roads across freehold are private roads. Access is a privilege the owner can withdraw.
Ignoring blueberry fields. Wide open barrens in the north and east are often blueberry leases, and they're agricultural land under the Trespass Act.
Driving the shore. Driving on a beach, a marsh or in a river is unlawful under the same act, even on Crown land.
Forgetting the reserves. First Nations reserves aren't Crown land open to the public. Ask the community before entering for anything beyond passing through on a public road.

Sources

Last reviewed: October 2026. Regulations change; always confirm with the official source before you go.

How to find Crown land in New Brunswick (and tell it from freehold)