A Range Unit is an administrative area established to assist in the management of the range program. Typically made up of one or more pastures. Generally, one or more Range Units make up a Stock Range

A Stock Range is an administrative area established to coincide with local livestock association areas. Generally, stock ranges are made up of one or more range units. Stock ranges are found in select areas of the province where applicable; not all areas of the province contain stock ranges

This spatial layer displays Range Tenures (grazing and hay cutting licence and permits) administered by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations. A Range Tenure is an area of Crown rangeland where a Range Act tenure applies. Tenure holders access a defined amount of forage through grazing (measured in Animal Unit Months) or hay (tonnage). Range Tenures apply only to Crown Land. In some cases, digital boundaries may overlap Private Land but these lands are not part of the Grazing area (as described in the legal description). Grazing may overlap waterbodies during drawdown (also described legally in the Tenure documents and where applicable, Range Use Plan). Livestock may graze islands and large bodies of water may act as Natural Range Barriers. March 3, 2023: Updates to the Range Tenure attribute table as described. Please contact Nancy.Elliot@gov.bc.ca if you have questions. To guide your use: 1. Layer contains RETIRED, PENDING, and ACTIVE Tenures (=Licenses and Permits); Select ACTIVE under attribute LIFE_CYCLE_STATUS_CODE to isolate all active tenures (status refers to spatial boundary status - therefore, a spatial boundary must be Retired in the Forest Tenure Administration system to have a status of retired); 2. Unique ID for Polygon is by RAN# in attribute FOREST_FILE_ID. Each tenure has own its RAN# (e.g. RAN07777). Multiple areas (polygons) belonging to the same tenure may have same RAN# with unique map block ids (e.g. RAN07777 A, RAN07777 B) 3. The field SUM_TENURE_ACTIVE_AREA_HA will provide, where LIFE_CYCLE_STATUS_CODE is ACTIVE, the total tenure area in Ha. For single block (polygon) tenures, this will be the same area as the polygon. Where there are multiple blocks, this will be the total sum area of all Active blocks. (Note this does not include PENDING or RETIRED tenure areas. Area is for Approved and Active Tenure boundaries. A block may be Approved but Pending, and therefore is not included). Review data for multipart vs multi polygons 4. AUTHORIZED_USE and TOTAL_ANNUAL_USE are for the entire Tenure; where there are multiple blocks, the total is over all blocks, seasonally distributed through different pastures 3. FILE_TYPE_CODE contains information on the type of Permit: • E01 - Grazing License • E02 - Grazing Permit • H01 - Haycutting License • H02 - Haycutting Permit 4. IF YOU ARE DOING SPATIAL ANALYSIS based on AREA --- Please note that tenures overlap either partially or wholly amongst tenure holders. One area may be shared by more than one Tenure holder and therefore there will be multiple congruent or partially overlapping polygons (multipart). If you want to do SPATIAL ANALYSIS based strictly on area, you must collapse or flatten the data using DISSOLVE so that the polygons are 1:1 with the land base (suggested approach)

A Range Pasture is a grazing area enclosed and separated from other areas by fencing or other barriers (e.g. Natural Range Barrier). May be the management unit of grazing land as reflected in a Range Use Plan. Range Pastures are administrative and not legal boundaries.