There are seven primary Crown land use designations:
- General Use Area
- Enhanced Management Area
- Provincial Park
- Conservation Reserve
- Forest Reserve
- Wilderness Area
- Provincial Wildlife Area
Dedicated Protected Area is an additional primary land use designation used in the Far North.
Each designation has provincial level land use policy associated with it. The General Use Area designation is the most flexible designation and has few provincial-level policies. Protected areas policies are established in legislation and there is little or no flexibility in the application of these policies. A discussion of these land use designations, their associated policies and application is found in the Guide to Crown Land Use Planning (2011).
Land use policy that applies to a specific land use area is called "area-specific land use policy". Area-specific land use policy is developed through local Crown land use planning processes. Area-specific land use policies are documented in the Crown Land Use Policy Atlas (the Atlas) and reflect both the provincial level policy associated with the primary land use designation and the policy developed through local Crown land use planning processes.
Sources of Policy Information
Area-specific land use policies in the Atlas originate from a variety of planning sources including: District Land Use Guidelines (1983 as revised); local land use area plans such as the Madawaska Highlands Land Use Plan (1997) ; Ontario's Living Legacy Land Use Strategy (1999); and the Guide to Crown Land Use Planning (2011).
There are two broad types of land use policy information - primary and overlay.
Primary Crown Land Use Area Policies
Each land use area documented in the Atlas is assigned to one of the seven primary land use designations (as listed above) and each of these land use areas has a policy report that contains the area-specific land use policies.
Overlay Area Policies
Overlay designations identify areas with policies that modify the policies of the underlying primary land use areas. The overlay policy takes priority to the primary policy. Overlay area boundaries generally do not match the primary land use area boundaries and may overlap more than one primary land use area. The policy report for the overlay area is accessed through the underlying primary land use area's policy report.
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| Geikie Island Crown Game Preserve in the Lake Nipigon Conservation Reserve |
One example of an overlay designation is Crown Game Preserves. Crown Game Preserves have specific policies (no hunting and no trapping) that are established under the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Act. As a result, where a Crown Game Preserve overlays a land use area where provincial policy normally permits hunting, the Crown Game Preserve prohibition on hunting is the applicable policy.
Example: The Geikie Island Crown Game Preserve (represented by diagonal lines) is in the Lake Nipigon Conservation Reserve (represented by green fill). Hunting and commercial fur harvesting are not permitted in the Crown Game Preserve portion of the Conservation Reserve, but are permitted in other areas of the Conservation Reserve (Note: the entire Conservation Reserve is not shown on the map).
