Cabinet approval and proposed forestry changes
Rob Shaw disclosed the land-return plan in Northern Beat on Oct. 15. Ministry of Forests briefing documents dated Sept. 10, 2026, show that Premier David Eby's cabinet approved the policy in July. Less than two weeks after the briefing's date, Eby called a provincial election two years early.
Eby has said he wants to stabilize his majority to "take big swings" on the province's struggling economy and major resource projects on Crown land. He has not specified those measures. Many locations covered by the land-return plan also remain unknown.
A draft Forest Act amendment, targeted for the spring 2027 legislative session, would add First Nations land transfers to the purposes for which the province can reduce timber harvests without paying compensation. Roads, pipelines, parks and conservation areas are already on that list. Under the proposal, compensation would not necessarily be payable to tenure holders until cumulative reductions exceeded 5 percent of their annual allowable cut.
The province's record deficit and debt have made conventional forest-license buyouts more difficult as dozens of Indigenous communities continue seeking land returns.
The August 2026 public accounts identified 135,425 hectares of Crown land already reserved for treaty agreements, an area described as equivalent to half of Metro Vancouver. The 400-parcel plan reaches beyond those treaty commitments to include less formal reconciliation agreements.
Overlapping claims complicate treaty settlements
The government has moved ahead with treaty settlements in territories where competing claims have held up negotiations for decades. Two disputed agreements involve K'ómoks First Nation on central Vancouver Island and Kitselas First Nation along the Skeena River. Both nations began treaty talks in the mid-1990s.
According to the BC Treaty Commission, the K'ómoks Treaty Act was introduced on April 14, 2026, and received Royal Assent on May 28. Federal ratification remains necessary; once that process is complete, K'ómoks would become British Columbia's ninth modern treaty nation.
When the treaty reached the legislature in the spring, neighboring First Nations threatened highway blockades and protests at the BC Hydro dam supplying the region. More than two dozen First Nations assert territorial rights in the area, including We Wai Kai Nation, whose most prominent member is former federal attorney general Jody Wilson-Raybould.
One local nation said the Eby government had expanded the proposed K'ómoks treaty lands during the previous two years, further encroaching on territory it also claims. Separately, Wei Wai Kum First Nation says the treaty claims 80 percent of its traditional territory, CBC News reported.
The province had postponed the Kitselas treaty vote until the fall 2026 legislative session. Without the snap election, lawmakers would now be debating that agreement. It would give the roughly 745-member nation ownership of about 382 square kilometers near Terrace, according to CBC News.
Opponents include Haisla Nation, a major participant in B.C.'s LNG development, as well as Lax Kw'alaams and other nations along the salmon-bearing Skeena. Lax Kw'alaams and the Nine Allied Tribes say the Kitselas treaty would affect more than 90 percent of their territory.
Other First Nations have pursued reconciliation or economic development agreements rather than wait through treaty negotiations. Some favor those routes because they can be faster and yield more generous terms for their communities.
Indigenous conservation declarations and mining disputes
Indigenous protected and conserved areas are another part of the Crown land picture, although it is not known whether land for them is included in the 400 parcels. In August 2021, Ottawa committed up to $340 million over five years to Indigenous-led conservation, with $166 million budgeted for these areas. The federal definition centers Indigenous leadership in decisions and actions to conserve lands, waters and ice.
In 2022, the Gitxsan house group Wilps Gwininitxw declared all 1,700 square kilometers of its asserted upper Skeena territory protected. Another Gitxsan house group, Wilps 'WiiK'aax, received $400,000 from the Watershed Security Fund in 2024 to declare a protected area spanning 2,140 square kilometers in the Sustut, Babine and Upper Skeena watersheds.
Wilps 'WiiK'aax's stated goals include "monitoring and restoring fish habitats against industrial logging and mining pressures" and "upholding governance rooted in Gitxsan laws carried by the land." The Watershed Security Fund began in 2023 with $100 million from the provincial NDP government's StrongerBC budget. The Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation contributed another $1 million in spring 2026.
The Lower Similkameen Indian Band also declared a protected area in 2022, covering the full Ashnola River watershed in the South Okanagan. Its Ashnola Protected and Conserved Area includes the existing Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park and Snowy Protected Area.
The band said publicly this summer that it had been unable to stop mining claims there. Lauren Terbasket, its protected-areas negotiator, told CBC in August that it was working with B.C.'s Water, Land and Resource Stewardship ministry, the Ministry of Forests and the Colville Confederated Tribes in Washington state.
Terbasket said the Ministry of Mining and Critical Minerals had declined to participate. She also said the chief gold commissioner had told the band it was not approved to join the region's land-use planning table.
Province-wide conservation figures provide a separate measure of protected land. Environment and Climate Change Canada reported that, as of Dec. 31, 2025, B.C. had conserved 188,862 square kilometers of terrestrial area, or 20.0 percent of the province. Protected areas accounted for 150,266 square kilometers, or 15.9 percent, while other effective area-based conservation measures covered 38,596 square kilometers, or 4.1 percent.
Old-growth deferrals and negotiations outside treaties
Alongside land transfers and Indigenous conservation declarations, the province is implementing its 2021 old-growth protection strategy. Large areas remain under temporary logging deferrals, and the government said in 2025 that it was focusing on completing long-term management plans. Whether any of those areas overlap with the 400 proposed transfer parcels is unclear.
The old-growth measures sit within a broader provincial land-use planning program. Mineral exploration and other land-based activities are currently paused in north-central and northwestern B.C., including an area where the Tahltan Nation and the province are jointly managing a landscape-planning process. Mineral explorers have described that process as paralyzed.
A Tahltan consent agreement allowing extensions of two mines developed into continuing negotiations over a confidential "foundation agreement." Those talks have proceeded alongside the B.C. Treaty Commission's 35-year mandate.
Some Aboriginal law experts describe the emerging consent, foundation and reconciliation agreements as "one-way transfers" of land, resources and governance. They warn that these arrangements do not balance Indigenous and non-Indigenous interests in the way treaties seek to do.
