BC Mineral Titles Online (MTO): How to Find, Map and Monitor Mineral Claims

Mineral Titles Online (MTO) is the Province of British Columbia's official system for acquiring and administering mineral, placer and coal titles. It is where claims are staked, maintained, transferred and paid for, and it is the authoritative record of who holds a title and when it expires. Exploration Maps does not replace MTO — it reads the province's public tenure dataset so you can search claims by tenure number or registered owner, map them, and track good-to-dates, then sends you back to MTO for anything that governs a transaction or a deadline.

Example mining map created in Exploration Maps — A finished map exported from Exploration Maps — the kind of output this guide walks you to.

What Mineral Titles Online actually is

MTO is the Province of British Columbia's online system for mineral, placer and coal titles, run by the Mineral Titles Branch. It is a transactional system, not just a viewer: free miner certificate holders use it to acquire cell claims, register assessment work, pay cash in lieu, apply for leases, and transfer title.

That transactional role is why MTO is the authority. A tenure's current status, its good-to-date, its registered owner and its boundaries are what MTO says they are. Any other source — including this one — is a copy of published data, and a copy can be stale, partial, or wrong. Start at Mineral Titles Online; background, rules and contacts are on the Mineral Titles Branch site.

What must be verified in MTO

Current ownership, current status, good-to-date, and exact boundaries — before any transaction, filing, staking decision or deadline decision. Exploration Maps is not the official title registry and does not connect to your MTO account.

What people actually use MTO for

Every one of those is a transaction or an authoritative lookup, and every one of them happens in MTO. Nothing in this guide changes that.

Acquiring cell claims (which requires a free miner certificate and an MTO account)
Registering statements of work, or paying cash in lieu, to push a good-to-date forward
Transferring title, and recording ownership changes
Applying for mineral or placer leases
Checking the authoritative status and expiry of a specific tenure number

Where MTO is hard work, and what to do instead

MTO is built for administering titles, not for exploring the tenure landscape. Three jobs are noticeably awkward in it:

Those three gaps are what Exploration Maps is for. It reads the province's public mineral tenure dataset — the same DataBC layer that underlies most third-party BC claim maps — and puts a search, a map and a reminder system on top of it.

Seeing a whole company's land position at once, rather than one tenure at a time
Getting claim boundaries out as a map you can put in a deck, a report or a news release
Remembering, months later, that a good-to-date is approaching

Searching BC claims outside MTO

Use the search box at the top of this page: by registered owner, by tenure number, or by area on the map. Map-sheet lookup is not available; use Area instead.

The BC mineral claims search guide explains each search, the fields that come back, what to do when nothing matches, and how to check a result in MTO. Owner search returns candidates for you to confirm, because names reach the registry in clipped legal form, under previous names and through subsidiaries; the company claim-search guide covers that workflow.

Mapping the results

Select the tenures you want and add them to the map. They come in as a claims layer with the boundaries from the public dataset, and the map fits to their extent. Assign the Claims role for the blue stroke and semi-transparent fill convention that most NI 43-101 figures use, add a title block and your logo, and export.

If you already have a tenure file from MTO or a GIS, import it instead — GeoJSON, zipped Shapefile and KML all work. See the BC mineral claims search guide for the full walkthrough. To lay the tenures out as an investor figure, use the mining map software; for a drilling update, add collars and intercepts on a drill results map. For worked examples, browse the mineral claim maps by company.

Tracking good-to-dates afterwards

The good-to-date is the date by which a claim must be maintained — assessment work recorded, or cash paid in lieu — to stay in good standing. MTO is where you do that work. Exploration Maps is where you find out it is coming.

Tenure Monitor saves a group of claims, reads their published good-to-dates, and emails reminders at 90, 30 and 1 day beforehand. It also flags changes it detects in the government record — a good-to-date that moved, an owner added or removed, a title that stopped appearing in the dataset. See the BC claim expiry guide.

Monitor up to 10 BC claims free. Reminders before each good-to-date. No credit card.

Monitor my BC claims →

How current the public data is

The claim search queries the province's published tenure dataset at the moment you search. Tenure Monitor reads a copy of the same dataset synchronized on a schedule, and shows the time of the last successful synchronization on every portfolio view and in every reminder email. The province does not document an update frequency for the published dataset, so neither is a substitute for MTO.

Data source

BC mineral tenure data is published by DataBC. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – British Columbia. Published data is a copy of the registry, not the registry.

When to go back to MTO

The short version: use Exploration Maps to notice things and to communicate them, and use MTO to decide and to act.

Before staking, or deciding not to re-stake ground
Before filing assessment work or paying cash in lieu
Before any transaction — option, purchase, transfer, or JV
When a reminder or a detected change tells you something moved
Any time the exact boundary or the exact expiry date matters

Monitor up to 10 BC claims free. Reminders at 90, 30 and 1 day before each good-to-date.

Search claims →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Mineral Titles Online?

MTO is the Province of British Columbia's official online system for mineral, placer and coal titles, administered by the Mineral Titles Branch. Free miner certificate holders use it to acquire cell claims, register assessment work, pay cash in lieu, transfer title and apply for leases. It is the authoritative record of BC mineral title.

Do I need a free miner certificate to search BC mineral claims?

No. A free miner certificate is required to acquire and hold mineral title in British Columbia, and to transact in MTO. Searching and viewing published tenure information — including in Exploration Maps — does not require one.

Can Exploration Maps replace MTO?

No, and it is not intended to. Exploration Maps reads the province's published tenure dataset to make searching, mapping and deadline tracking easier. It does not log into MTO, store MTO credentials, file assessment work, pay cash in lieu, register title, or acquire ground. Ownership, status, boundaries and deadlines must be verified in MTO.

How do I find who owns a mineral claim in BC?

Search by registered owner in Exploration Maps to see a company's published land position, or look up a specific tenure number. For authoritative ownership — the answer you would rely on for a transaction — check the tenure in MTO, which is the registry of record.

How current is the claim data in Exploration Maps?

The claim search queries the province's published tenure dataset when you search, so it is as current as that dataset. Tenure Monitor reads a synchronized copy and shows the time of the last synchronization on every portfolio view and in every reminder email. Tenure status can change, so verify anything that matters in MTO.

What is a good-to-date?

The date by which a mineral claim must be maintained — through recorded assessment work or a cash payment in lieu — to remain in good standing. It is published in the BC tenure dataset and is the date Tenure Monitor counts down to, in Pacific time.