Half a billion dollars. That’s how much it could cost to pay out more than 1,600 mineral tenure claims that the outgoing provincial government approved within declared and proposed Indigenous protected areas across B.C. And it’s unclear who would be on the hook for those payments. 

In July 2026, the Lower Similkameen Indian Band issued a press release drawing attention to the issue. It found 37,498 hectares of mineral claims the province approved inside the boundaries of the the nʔaysnúlaʔxʷ Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area (IPCA) since 2022, when the nation had declared its intention to protect it. The claims cover nearly a quarter of the proposed 150,000-hectare protected area, which would encompass most of the Ashnola River watershed near Keremeos, B.C.

Lower Similkameen Indian Band Chief Keith Crow said in the press release the tenure approvals amount to “a mockery of British Columbia’s constitutional duties,” adding it’s a violation of the province’s “obligation to interpret laws in a manner consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” 

But it’s not just the Ashnola where mineral claims have been approved inside of proposed protected areas. The Narwhal reviewed publicly available records of provincial mineral tenure approvals since the province passed the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA) in 2019. We overlaid that data with a map of all of the proposed and in-progress IPCAs in the province. Viewed together, the data shows that, over the past seven years, B.C. has approved 1,618 mineral tenures covering 594,987 hectares inside proposed Indigenous protected areas. 

Among these are dozens of tenures in two other protected areas that the Lower Similkameen has proposed inside its traditional territory. In the Ollalla Highlands area near the town of Hedley, B.C., the province approved 38 mineral tenures covering nearly 13 per cent of the area. In the Tulameen River watershed, west of Princeton, they approved 359 mineral tenures which cover 30 per cent of a proposed protected area. Nearly two-thirds of these tenures have been filed since 2025. 

Across the rest of the province, mineral tenures have been approved inside the proposed Stein Nahatlach protected area in Nlaka’pamux territory, Dene K’éh Kusān in Kaska territory and inside a number of proposed protected areas in St’át’imc territory. A large number were also approved inside the boundaries of T’akú Tlatsini, a protected area first envisioned by the Taku River Tlingit Nation in 2009 and declared in 2023. 

Mineral claims within protected areas make things complicated. A provision in B.C.’s Mineral Tenure Act requires claim holders to be compensated if the province renders their claims unusable by, for example, establishing a park or protected area. In 2022, this provision led the province to pay Imperial Metals $24 million to give up mineral claims the company said contained gold, silver and copper inside an area between E.C. Manning and Skagit River provincial parks.

According to an affidavit submitted to the B.C. Supreme Court in 2023, the “cost for compensating a mineral claim holder ranges from $250 per hectare to $850.” Applying that number to the 594,987 hectares of mineral claims the province has approved inside proposed Indigenous protected areas could put the high-end of the price tag for buying them all out at more than $500 million. 

B.C.’s recent election resulted in a change in government, leaving questions about the future of provincial support for Indigenous-led conservation efforts.

What’s Lorne Doerksen’s plan for Indigenous protected areas? 

During the election, Harlan Schilling, Chief of the Liard First Nation, one of the four member nations of the Kaska, raised concerns about how a change in government could impact a proposed three-million-hectare protected area called Dene K’éh Kusān.

After the votes were counted, those concerns persisted. And while Schilling congratulated premier-designate Lorne Doerksen, he also encouraged the BC Conservative leader not to let progress on the protected area backslide. 

“Dene K’éh Kusān was close to the finish line when the election was called,” he explained in a statement that was emailed to The Narwhal. “The groundwork is done and the public is behind it. We hope the new government will see the value of that work and help us complete it.”

But during the campaign, Doerksen promised to repeal DRIPA and open up lands to mineral exploration. The Conservative platform pledged to “make B.C. the fastest place in North America to permit a mine.” Doerksen didn’t detail a clear plan for conservation and new protected areas, but in 2024 his predecessor, John Rustad, said that if his party formed a government, it would “absolutely axe” the government’s plan to protect 30 per cent of lands and waters by 2030. 

Together, DRIPA and the 30-by-30 pledge have underpinned the province’s past support for Indigenous-led conservation. According to Torrance Coste, associate director of the Wilderness Committee, that combination is why the previous government considered IPCAs “critical” to both reconciliation and conservation.

“The water, lands and resource stewardship ministry, since that ministry has existed, has said [Indigenous conservation] is how we’re doing it,” he explained. But now, he’s not sure what Doerksen’s commitment to “supercharge the economy” through mining, forestry and other extractive industries, along with his promise to repeal DRIPA, will mean. 

Doerksen’s office did not reply to requests to comment on this story. But on Oct. 25, the morning after his party swept to a decisive majority election win, he renewed his promise to repeal DRIPA, describing it as one of his government’s top priorities. 

“We’re committed to doing it as soon as we can,” Doerksen said.

He also reiterated his pledge to support mineral exploration and mining as key engines of the provincial economy. Todd Stone, president and chief executive officer of the province’s Association for Mineral Exploration, said B.C. has “elected a government that has made mining a priority.”

Interim protections over in-progress Indigenous protected areas are set to expire 

While more than half a million hectares worth of mineral tenures inside of proposed IPCAs is a lot, there could have been even more had the province not closed regions to staking when it entered land use negotiations with First Nations like Taku Tlingit and Kaska. 

In June 2025, the province enacted two Environmental Land Use Act Orders and three No Registration Reserves covering large swaths of the northern part of the province as it started working towards establishing IPCAs in the area. Different legislation enables these two land use designations, but their effects are similar: they make it impossible to stake new mineral claims in certain regions.

But Lower Similkameen hasn’t been so lucky. According to the nation, they applied for a No Registration Reserve in the Ashnola in September 2024 but were unsuccessful. Since then, the nation has tracked dozens of new claims registered in the region. A whopping 88, covering more than 4,000 hectares, were issued on a single day: July 16, 2026. Lauren Terbasket, the nation’s lead negotiator for parks and protected areas, described it as “a gold rush” in an interview with the CBC.

In late September, the Union of British Columbia Indian Chiefs passed a resolution supporting Lower Similkameen during their annual general meeting. It calls on the province to “immediately establish, in accordance with the direction of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, meaningful interim legal protection for the Ashnola that prevents registration of new mineral titles and mining activities within the nʔaysnúlaʔxʷ (Ashnola) watershed while long-term protection arrangements are advanced.” 

But with the new government expressing vocal support for mining across the province, getting interim protections for the Ashnola could be a challenge, so could keeping protections in areas like Dene K’éh Kusān, where Kaska hoped that the negotiations over the protected area would be finished by the end of this year. The election delayed that process, and now they’re not sure what a change in government might mean, especially since the restrictions over new mineral claims in the region are set to expire in January 2027. 

“Time matters,” Chief Schilling said. “We’re asking the new government to extend [the restrictions] while we finish the plan together. An extension keeps everyone’s options open and respects the years of work that the Kaska, the province and British Columbians have put into this plan.”

Legitimate claims or a ‘cash grab’? 

While the laws governing mining and conservation in the province may be in flux, the desire for minerals is not. According to the British Columbia Mineral and Coal Exploration Survey, spending on mineral and coal exploration in the province hit a record-high $751 million in 2025. That’s more than double the $327 million spent in 2019, when B.C. passed DRIPA, and more than the $643 million that industry spent in 2023.In Lower Similkameen territory, some of this spending has been focused on operations looking for copper, gold and platinum. Some of the largest claims are held by Adamera Minerals Corporation and a numbered company, 1000334153 Ontario Inc., which Vancouver-based mining company Auric Resources acquired in September 2025. Both companies are pursuing mining projects in the region, but neither responded to The Narwhal’s request for comment. 

The remaining claims in Lower Similkameen’s proposed protected areas are from a mix of corporations and individuals. Some of these, the nation worries, aren’t even honest attempts at mineral extraction, but attempts to profit if the province recognizes an Indigenous protected area in the Ashnola, which would likely require buying out claims. 

“It is hard not to see this as a cash grab by mining companies ahead of a formal Crown conservation designation in the area,” Janet Terbasket, an elected councillor with Lower Similkameen, said.

Staking claims without plans to actually develop them — for example, to hold the land in hopes of a payout when a protected area is created — is called nuisance staking. B.C.’s Mineral Tenure Act doesn’t explicitly mention the practice, although it does have a provision against staking mineral claims inside established provincial parks and protected areas. Instead, the Chief Gold Commissioner, the provincial office responsible for overseeing mineral claims, has the power to extinguish nuisance claims. But since proving nuisance staking requires understanding the intent of a claim, successful cases proving it are rare.

“There’s one of two possibilities,” Jessica Clogg, executive director and senior counsel at West Coast Environmental Law said. “One, the miner simply doesn’t believe that the Crown will ever take effective action to protect the Indigenous protected area. The other possibility is that even if it’s not mining for compensation, there’s at least the sense that there’s no harm in doing it because they’ll be compensated on the back end. There’s no risk.” 

But the province, which would have to compensate claim holders, faces considerable financial risk. So do First Nations who are leading conservation efforts in their territories. 

In 2023, the B.C. government announced a $300-million fund to support Indigenous-led conservation. 

According to the BC Parks Foundation, who administers the fund, $1.1 million was granted to the Lower Similkameen to pursue protections in the Ashnola. But, as Andy Day, the foundation’s chief executive officer, explained in a statement to The Narwhal, “the B.C. Conservation Fund cannot be used for a provincial obligation regarding compensation.” 

“Its primary purpose is to fund sustainable, reliable, long-term stewardship of priority biodiverse areas in B.C.,” Day said. 

But even if that money were available to buy out mineral claims in the Ashnola, $1.1 million wouldn’t go that far. If the historic range of compensation costs are applied, buying out the 37,498 hectares of tenures that have been approved inside the region could cost somewhere between $9.3 and $31 million.

It’s not clear who would be expected to foot that bill if the province recognizes the Indigenous protected area. In 2024, for example, when the province recognized an Indigenous protected area in Clayoquot Sound, the non-profit Nature United had to raise $40 million for the Tla-o-qui-aht and Ahousaht Nations to compensate the forestry-tenure holder, Mamook Natural Resources, for the loss of that tenure. That wasn’t provincial funding, but private and philanthropic money. And, as Coste explained, that’s money that wasn’t “available for nations to hire guardians to manage those protected areas, or to do restoration work or to build tourism infrastructure.”  

Of course, buying out claims depends on the province continuing to pursue IPCAs. And while mining and mineral exploration advocates have expressed concerns that these protected areas create delays and uncertainty for the sector, Chief Schilling thinks that Indigenous protected areas like Dene K’éh Kusān actually help provide clarity for industry. 

“The Kaska recognize how important resource development is to our communities and to the northern economy,” he said. “The [Dene K’éh Kusān] plan sets out clearly where the land is protected and where responsible development can go ahead, with the Kaska as partners.”  

Not only that, he explained, the process so far has been “built through give and take, with input from industry.” The Kaska have “worked with the province and with claim holders to address their interests.”The result, he said, is that most of the region’s higher mineral potential is outside the boundaries of the proposed protected area.“That clarity is good for investment, good for northern jobs and good for the land.” 

Lower Similkameen and Taku Tlingit have made similar statements. They’re not opposed to mining outright; they just want to have a say in the process. The question now is what kind of say the new provincial government plans to give them, and what that means for mining, conservation and First Nations. 

Advocates point to long standing issues with British Columbia mining law 

Among the questions the new government will have to answer about Indigenous Rights, mineral tenures and conservation, is what it plans to do about the province’s Mineral Tenure Act. Passed in 1988, the act can trace its roots back to the province’s 1859 Gold Fields Act, a piece of colonial legislation that, at the height of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, introduced a “free entry” mining system, allowing open claim staking on what the province considers Crown land.According to Nikki Skuce, director of the Northern Confluence Initiative, the province “committed to repeal and replace the Mineral Tenure Act in co-operation with Indigenous Peoples,” after passing DRIPA in 2019. That promise was formalized in 2022 in the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act Action Plan, which included modernizing the Mineral Tenure Act as one of the listed priorities. 

But while that work was supposed to move forward through something called the Mineral Tenure Act Modernization Office, the website for that office hasn’t been updated since 2024. It’s not clear why the process hasn’t moved forward, but Skuce thinks it could be related to a court case brought by the Gitxaała Nation and Ehattesaht First Nation in 2023 that challenged the province’s mineral staking regime.The case argued that B.C.’s “free entry” mining system, which since 2005 has allowed prospectors to trade a literal stake in the ground for an online system where they could buy claims for $1.75 per hectare, violated both DRIPA and Section 35 of the Canadian constitution. 

The court ruled that the mineral tenure process, which approved claims filed online without consulting First Nations “created adverse impacts on the petitioners’ Aboriginal Rights” and called for changes to the system. 

The province responded by implementing the Mineral Claims Consultation Framework in 2025, requiring registered claims to go through a consultation process with local First Nations. According to a pamphlet circulated to First Nations about the policy, nations would be “invited to share any concerns about how registering the claim may impact their Rights and Title, including those related to culture, spirituality, environment and economy.” 

But according to the Lower Similkameen, the consultations on the approved claims in the Ashnola were cursory, at best.

“Following a tight 30-day response period, the mining ministry made the decision to approve the mineral claim registrations without even speaking to Lower Similkameen Indian Band leadership,” the First Nation’s press release said.Mineral exploration advocates have also been critical of the process. In a report published in early 2026, the Association for Mineral Exploration argued that consultations had created “serious new challenges and roadblocks for explorers.” 

The report decried “long, unpredictable timelines, reduced confidentiality and unclear processes [that] all make it harder for explorers to plan projects and raise money” before calling for “immediate intervention … to improve performance and ensure a sustainable claim staking system for British Columbia.” 

And the association might get its wish, because while the previous government created the consultation framework in 2025, it also launched an appeal of the Gitxaała court ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada the following year.  

“Instead of following through on its commitment, [the province] is appealing that decision,” Skuce explained.

The new provincial government is likely to continue with that appeal, and, according to the Association for Mineral Exploration, be a friendlier ear for industry. What that all means for the convergence of First Nations rights, mining and conservation remains to be seen. But with 1,618 mineral tenures already approved within IPCAs and the new government promising more land access to mineral exploration companies, it won’t be simple to resolve.

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