The CDFW Owned and Operated Lands and Conservation Easements dataset is a subset of the CDFW Lands dataset. It contains lands owned (fee title), some operated (wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and public/fishing access properties that are leases/agreements with other agencies that may be publicly accessible) and conservation easements held by CDFW. CDFW Owned and Operated Lands and Conservation Easements replaces the prior dataset, DFG Owned and Operated Lands, which included only fee title lands and some operated lands (wildlife areas, ecological reserves, and public/fishing access properties that are leases/agreements with other agencies and that may be publicly accessible). This is a generalized version dataset that has a shorter attribute table than the original and also has been dissolved based on the fields included. Please note that some lands may not be accessible due to the protection of resources and habitat. It is recommended that users contact the appropriate regional office for access information and consult regulations for CDFW lands in Sections 550, 550.1, 551, 552, 630 and 702. For information on public use regulations on Department lands, please refer to the Public Uses on State and Federal Lands section of the Waterfowl, Upland Game, and Public Use Regulations booklet for both statewide and property-specific regulations https://wildlife.ca.gov/Regulations. All visitors are responsible for knowing and following the general and property-specific regulations.

The CDFW Lands dataset is a digitized geographical inventory of selected lands owned and/or administered by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife. Properties such as ecological reserves, wildlife areas, undesignated lands containing biological resource values, public and fishing access lands, and CDFW fish hatcheries are among those lands included in this inventory. Types of properties owned or administered by CDFW which may not be included in this dataset are parcels less than 1 acre in size, such as fishing piers, fish spawning grounds, fish barriers, and other minor parcels. Physical boundaries of individual parcels are determined by the descriptions contained in legal documents and assessor parcel maps relating to that parcel. The approximate parcel boundaries are drawn onto U.S. Geological Survey 7.5'-series topographic maps, then digitized and attributed before being added to the dataset. In some cases, assessor parcel or best available datasets are used to digitize the boundary. Using parcel data to adjust the boundaries is a work in progress and will be incorporated in the future. Township, range, and section lines were based on the U.S. Geological Survey 7.5' series topographic maps (1:24,000 - scale). In some areas, the boundaries will not align with the Bureau of Land Management's Public Lands Survey System (PLSS). See the "SOURCE" field for data used to digitize boundary.