Park or Conservation Reserve:
What's the difference?

A majority of the more than 300 new protected areas will be conservation reserves rather than parks. Conservation reserves:

• come under the Public Lands Act rather than the Parks Act, so they are not administered by Ontario Parks but by the Ministry of Natural Resources district staff
• like parks, are off-limits to logging, mining and other industrial uses
• generally, reserves have no infrastructure, on-site staffing or offical management plans, although some do have management “statements”
• allow sport hunting, fishing and snowmobile trails.

The situation in parks is a bit more complicated: Sport hunting has only been allowed in parks where it has been included in the individual park's management plan. (Sport hunting was never allowed in wilderness or nature-reserve class parks.) However, the current government has moved to change this to make sport hunting an accepted activity in all parks, unless stated otherwise in the management plan. In other words, rather than being the exception, sport hunting in parks will now be the rule. For more see our action page.

As part of its Ontario's Living Legacy program, the Ministry of Natural Resources is working to designate official boundaries for all of the new protected areas by 2003. Right now, most of the 378 new parks and reserves have only been given rough boundaries based on 1:50,0000 scale maps. The areas within these boundaries have, however, been officially withdrawn from forestry, mining and hydroelectric development.

In the next stage, the MNR, working with community members, industry, tourism operators and the Partnership, will draft detailed boundaries for each site based on 1:10,0000 scale maps. These boundaries will be made official when the new parks and reserves are regulated under either the Parks Act or the Public Lands Act. Under the Parks Act, each of the new parks is eventually required to have a mangement plan that explains how the values the park is meant to protect will be sustained.