The Park protects the largest old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest, where trees took root 200 to 1,000 years ago. Coastal rivers serve as highways for migrating fish, and young salmon journey from mountains to sea and back again as adults.

The park is home to an almost endless variety of animals, including black bear, otters, cougars, deer, flying squirrels, marmots, elk, beaver, and raccoons. The birds there include owls, puffins, bald eagles, osprey, jays, dippers, woodpeckers, hummingbirds, pelicans, seagulls… The list goes on and on.

Throw in such creatures as banana slugs and an infinite variety of insects, tide pool inhabitants ranging from sea urchins to abalone, several varieties of fish, and an abundance of microscopic critters, and you have a wild mix indeed. Plants also come in endless varieties—towering spruce, pine, and other trees, limitless flowering plants, uncounted types of moss, lichens, and fungus, and more greenery than you can shake a stick at.

An example of the diverse life that thrives in the park: In a recent scientific study of a single 300-year-old Sitka spruce, more than 100 species of mosses and lichens were identified living within its confines—more than a ton of plants and soil occupied the top of this single tree!

Dr. Nalini Nadkarni of Evergreen State University, in the Quinault Valley, collected just a few handfuls of soil from the tops of big-leaf maple trees to study mites and soil microbes. In collaboration with others, she learned that 45 species of mites lived in that small sample of soil.