Mineral Potential Project

The Mineral Potential project was initiated in 1992 to meet the need for cnrrent regional mineral potential information in regional and sub-regional land-use planning. These planning processes have the responsibility of making recommendations on protected areas, as described in the provincial Protected Areas Strategy (PAS). The goal of PAS, created in 1992, is to protect representative examples of the province’s natural, recreational and cultural heritage features. A provincial target of 12% protection has been established; when PAS was announced, 6% of BC was considered protected. Mineral exploration and mining are not allowed in protected areas, hence decisions on which areas to protect need to fully account for mineral values. Part of the mandate of the Commission on Resources and Environment (CORE) is to run regional land-use planning processes and to make recommendations to government on their findings. Initially, three regions, Vancouver Island, Cariboo-Chilcotin and the Kootenays, were selected for evaluation and land-use planning (Figure I). Recommending protected areas is one of the more controversial issues in the CORE process. To provide readily useable mineral resource information to this process, the land within each region was ranked withrespecttoits mineralpotentialusingquantitativeanalysis. The CORE process necessitated the upgrading of all resource and cultural inventories in the province to facilitate informed land-use planning. This project is one of more than