Stikine
Unincorporated area
Stikine Region
White Pass and Yukon Route
Atlin Good Hope Lake Cassiar Major communities
Location in British Columbia
Country	Canada
Province	British Columbia
Largest community	Atlin
Government [1]
• Type	Unincorporated area
• Body	None
• Administrator	Government of British Columbia
Area
• Land	118,663.53 km2 (45,816.25 sq mi)
Population  (2016)[2]
• Total	740
• Density	0.0062/km2 (0.016/sq mi)
Website	BC government page

TheStikine Region (/stəˈkiːn/) is anunincorporated area in northwesternBritish Columbia, Canada. It is the only area in the province that is not part of aregional district. The Stikine Region was left unincorporated following legislation that establishedthe province's regional districts in 1968 and is not classified as a regional district.^[3] It contains no municipal governments which normally constitute the majority of seats on the boards of regional districts. There is only one local planning area, theAtlin Community Planning Area, which was combined in 2009 with the Atlin Community Improvement District to provide fire, landfill, water, streetlighting, sidewalks and advisory land use services. All other services not provided privately are administered directly by various provincial government ministries. The area aroundDease Lake, formerly in the Stikine Region, is now within the boundaries of theRegional District of Kitimat–Stikine following a boundary amendment in 2008.^[4]

The Stikine Region has a total population of 740 (2016)^[5] including 355 First Nations persons, most from theTaku Tlingit ofAtlin andTeslin, British Columbia, and some reserves of theKaska Dena Council. Reserves and band governments are outside the jurisdiction of the provincial government which governs the Stikine Region directly through various ministry operations, as it is not an administrative body like a regional district and has no board. The2006 census count was 1,109 persons. Until December 2007 it had an area of 132,496 square kilometres (51,157 sq mi) or about the size of theUS state ofAlabama or theCanadian province ofNova Scotia. Its population density of one inhabitant per 160 square kilometres (62 sq mi) makes it the least densely populatedcensus division in both British Columbia andCanada as a whole.

As acensus division in the2021 Census of Population conducted byStatistics Canada, the Stikine Region had a population of683 living in386 of its667 total private dwellings, a change of-7.7% from its 2016 population of740. With a land area of 118,408.76 km² (45,717.88 sq mi), it had a population density of0.0/km² (0.0/sq mi) in 2021.^[6]

• Note: Totals greater than 100% due to multiple origin responses.

The term Stikine Region should not be confused with the termsStikine Territory,Stikine District, orStikine Country, which all mean something slightly different:

• Half the historical Stikine Country, roughly synonymous with theStikine Mining District of colonial times, as being the entire basin of that river, is in theRegional District of Kitimat–Stikine.
• The Stikine Territory was a colonial-era entity which existed briefly and had boundaries differing from that of the Stikine Countryper se, being latitudinal on its eastern extent and so cutting across terrain rather than defined by it; its southern boundary was the line of theFinlay andNass Rivers, while its northern boundary was the62nd parallel, north of which was theNorth-Western Territory. When the Stikine Territory was absorbed into British Columbia in 1863, the North-West Territory was expanded south to the60th parallel and the merged Stikine Territory significantly reduced in size. In 1867, the former Stikine Territory was further reduced in size when British claims on thelisière portion of theAlaska Panhandle were ignored by bothRussia and theUnited States in course of theAlaska Purchase.^[13] Even after that, British perceptions that British territory had included the sites ofSkagway,Haines andDyea were overruled in the settlement of theAlaska Boundary Dispute.

Most of the Stikine Region, the boundaries of which reflect modern-era administrative realities, is composed of areas not part of the historicalor geographical StikineCountry and the relatedStikine Mining District but whichwere part of the Stikine Territory. These were theAtlin District and some of theCassiar Mining Districts, as well as some of theLiard basin, plus the basin of theTatshenshini-Alsekin the "BC Panhandle" west of Skagway and north ofAlaska'sGlacier Bay National Park.

In the 2001 Census, Statistics Canada enumerated the following list of "Designated Places". None of them are municipalities – they are a mixture of Indian Reserves (IR; names end in numbers) and "Indian settlements" (aboriginal communities that are not formally identified as Indian Reserves), which are geographically within the boundaries of theStikine Region Regional District Electoral Area, with the following populations as per the 2006 Canadian Census:^[e]

It is bordered by theYakutat,Skagway-Hoonah-Angoon,Juneau andHaines boroughs of theUS state ofAlaska to the west,Yukon to the north (which has nocounty-like system of division), theNorthern Rockies Regional Municipality andPeace River Regional District to the east, and the Regional Districts ofBulkley–Nechako and Kitimat–Stikine to the south.

The principal economic activity in the region is mining. The region's largest mine was theCassiarasbestos mine which opened in 1952. The mine was depleted by 1991 and after a failed expansion to more underground deposits, it was closed in early 1992. The Erickson Gold mine was operational from 1979 to 1988. The Taurus gold mine operated between 1982 and 1988. Both were planned to re-open in 1993–1994 but neither was able. The Golden Bear gold-silver mine operated between 1990 and 1993 before closing due to cost overruns. It was re-opened in 1997 after shifting to underground mining, from open-pit, but closed again in late 2001. The newTulsequah Chief Mine on theTulsequah River, a tributary of theTaku, south of the Atlin Country and just inside the international boundary to the north of Juneau, Alaska, with an estimated at 7.7 million tons – containing copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver – is under construction.

A major discovery of copper, gold, cobalt, silver and zinc was removed from mining potential with the establishment in 1993 of theTatshenshini-Alsek Provincial Park, located in the province's northwesternmost panhandle. The park's establishment ended plans to build theWindy Craggy Minemegaproject. The area is now part of aWorld Heritage Site withKluane National Park andGlacier Bay National Monument, which flank it to the north and south. Other provincial parks in the Stikine Region include theAtlin Provincial Park and Recreation Area and theSpatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park. Though much of the Stikine Region is unprotected, the area's remoteness and unusual subarctic landscapes, and location along one of only two overland routes to the Yukon and Alaska, are attracting a growing amount of tourist traffic and generating employment in outfitting, guiding and hunting.

• Official website

• Regional districts of British Columbia
• Stikine Country
• Unincorporated areas of Canada

• Webarchive template wayback links
• CS1 maint: archived copy as title
• Articles with short description
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• Use mdy dates from December 2021
• Pages using infobox settlement with no coordinates
• Official website not in Wikidata