Discussion Paper - About Today's Protected Areas

Provincial Parks

Provincial parks are protected areas of lands and waters with defined boundaries established under the Provincial Parks Act primarily to permanently protect natural heritage features.

The goal of the Ontario provincial parks system is:

To ensure that Ontario's provincial parks protect significant natural, cultural, and recreational environments, while providing ample opportunities for visitors to participate in recreational activities.

The four key objectives are:

Protection: To protect provincially significant elements of the natural and cultural landscape of Ontario.
Recreation: To provide outdoor recreation opportunities ranging from high-intensity day-use to low-intensity wilderness experiences.
Heritage Appreciation: To provide opportunities for exploration and appreciation of the outdoor natural and cultural heritage of Ontario.
Tourism: To provide Ontario residents and out-of-province visitors with opportunities to discover and experience the distinctive regions of the province.

Provincial parks, managed by Ontario Parks, make up 88 per cent of the area of the protected areas network. Provincial parks range from small areas intended mainly to provide recreation, such as Port Bruce Provincial Park with 5.2 hectares, to huge wilderness parks such as Polar Bear with more than two million hectares. Many are actively operated to provide recreational opportunities – 105 operating parks provide facilities and/or services on a formal basis. These operating parks offer 18,810 vehicle-accessible campsites and 7,000 interior campsites accessible by foot or canoe.

Ontario’s parks host more than 10 million visits each year, with use growing since the early 1990s. Consequently, they make a major contribution to Ontario’s economy by encouraging tourism. Through park user surveys and socio-economic analysis, Ontario Parks has been able to determine the extent of this economic contribution. In 2001, expenditures by Ontario Parks and park visitors totalled more than $290 million. Ontario Parks has authority under the Provincial Parks Act to use park revenues to fund park operations. This ensures that money spent in parks by park visitors is used to support parks.

Provincial parks have existed in some form for 111 years. With high levels of recreational use in many parks, a wide range of policies and regulations were developed to guide park use and protect park resources. Regulations focus on the dos and don’ts of park use and fines for non-compliance. The policies are described in the Provincial Parks Planning and Management Policies (1992). Highlights of these policies include:

Goals, principles and objectives (protection, recreation, heritage education and tourism)
A park classification system with objectives for each class of park (classes include wilderness, nature reserve, natural environment, waterway, historical and recreation;)
A park zoning system (wilderness, nature reserve, natural environment, historical, access and recreation;)
Policies about which uses are permitted or restricted in various classes of parks and zones; and
A framework for preparing management plans that guide the management of individual provincial parks.

Environmental Assessment Act
Projects in provincial parks are subject to the Environmental Assessment Act. Since 1978, provincial park undertakings have conformed to obligations issued under this act by the Minister of the Environment. A Class Environmental Assessment for Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves is currently under review.

The management planning framework sets out methodology and content requirements. There are two types of plans:

Management plans prepared with public consultation, which enable facility development and active management;
Interim management statements which identify values and the direction required to protect them. Interim management statements do not authorize new facility development or active management.

A management plan would have to be prepared before a new trail or campground could be developed or active wildlife management could be initiated.

Conservation Reserves

Conservation reserves are protected areas of lands and waters with defined boundaries established under the Public Lands Act, Regulation 805/94 primarily to permanently protect natural heritage features and provide recreation opportunities.

Conservation reserves make up about 12 per cent of the protected areas network. Regulation 805/94 of the Public Lands Act was passed in 1994 to establish this new type of protected area intended primarily to protect significant features and provide recreational opportunities. These areas have fewer restrictions on recreational and commercial uses than provincial parks. Commercial logging, mining, hydro-electric power development and other industrial uses are prohibited by this regulation. Otherwise, the provisions of the Public Lands Act and associated regulations apply to conservation reserves.

Conservation reserves are different from provincial parks in that they:

Are relatively new (parks have more history - 111 years)
Were created primarily for protection (parks also have objectives for recreation, heritage appreciation and tourism)
Have limited policy direction (parks have a strong policy framework)
Utilize basic planning processes that, in some cases, do not require public consultation (public consultation is mandatory for park management planning)

Do not currently employ a classification system or zoning (park management relies on both classification and zoning.)

A provincial policy for conservation reserves was approved in 1997. The policy states that the goal for conservation reserves is to protect natural heritage values on public lands while permitting compatible land use activities. It also:

Formalizes strategies for identifying conservation reserves;
Provides that statements of conservation interest or resource management plans should be prepared for each conservation reserve; and
Lays out policies for dealing with a range of matters, including which activities are allowed to occur and which are prohibited.

Conservation reserves, unlike provincial parks, are not formally operated to provide facilities, services or collect fees. Informal recreation activities are generally allowed to continue, if compatible with protection of natural heritage.

Projects in conservation reserves are subject to the Environmental Assessment Act. As noted above, a Class Environmental Assessment for Provincial Parks and Conservation Reserves has been prepared and is under review by Ministry of the Environment.

Wilderness Areas

Wilderness areas are protected areas of lands and waters with defined boundaries established under the 1959 Wilderness Areas Act. They are intended to preserve the natural state of a specific area.

Representation is the concept that the full range of our natural diversity should be systematically identified and protected. It is the primary concept used to identify Ontario’s network of protected areas.

Areas identified using this concept contain the best available examples of the Ontario’s natural diversity.
Geological diversity is defined by distinct geological features andthemes.
Terrestrial diversity is defined on the basis of ecoregions (see Figure 2).

Ontario is divided into 14 distinct ecoregions, each with a particular combination of climate, topography, landform and soil.

Wilderness areas make up about 0.001 per cent of the protected areas network. A total of 33 wilderness areas were established in Ontario, although no new wilderness areas have been established since the early 1960s. In fact, only 10 areas are located outside provincial parks or conservation reserves. No policies or regulations were ever developed for wilderness areas. As a result, the areas are generally managed in the same way as Crown land. Legislation and policy for wilderness areas does not provide the same level of protection as existing legislation for parks and conservation reserves.