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Redwood National Park
Click here for a closer look at Redwood's amazing environment.
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Remnants of several important habitats are protected at Redwood National Park. Redwood National Park is the sort of place where you can just take a walk and you'll encounter something amazing.
The tall tree forest has the air of permanence. While the trees may support a huge diversity of life, its apparent eventfulness is less than in the prairies and along the rivers and the coast.
Prairies
In springtime, prairie wildflowers burst with color that gives way in the dry summer to the grassland's amber glow. Prairies are the realm of raptors, the predatory red-tailed hawk, kestrel, and great horned owl, and their prey of gophers and meadow mice. Mountain lions, bobcats, coyotes, foxes, elk, and blacktail deer also frequent prairies, which were historically kept free of trees by fire and elk. Acorn-bearing Oregon white oaks edge prairies at higher elevations. Prairies make good birding spots where you may see the goldfinch junco, quail, or raven.
Hot Spots: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, especially Elk Prairie; Bald Hills Road, where you'll find Counts Hill Prairie; Childs Hill Prairie; Schoolhouse Prairie; and Dolasan Prairie Trail.
Seacoast
Even apart from the Coast Range and its lofty forests, Redwood's coastline would justify national park status. Rugged, with stretches of steep, rocky cliffs broken by rolling slopes, it is largely unaltered by humans. Generally rocky, its tidal zone can be difficult to traverse, with exceptions such as Gold Bluffs Beach, a seven-mile stretch of dunes and sandy beach.
Many of the park's marine bird species are migratory. Brown pelicans are summer visitors, cormorants take to lagoon or river and shore waters, and willets and sanderlings work the beach. Offshore may be California gray whales in migration, seals, sea lions, dolphins, porpoises, and orca (killer) whales. In the intertidal areas the vagaries of periodic wetting and drying have produced tightly zoned layers of life. Lagoons—where fresh water and salt water mix—are extremely productive of sea life.
Offshore
Between shore and the deep ocean an average surface acre is as productive as a similar acre of fertilized agricultural land. Basic wealth lies in phytoplankton—single-celled plants. Sea lions feed beyond the surf and haul out on shore or on sea stacks. Harbor seals swim in the surf; they haul out in sheltered coves. Several kinds of sea birds nest on offshore rocks.
Intertidal Zone
Twice daily on a 25-hour lunar cycle, tides rise and fall. In the zone between high and low tide, life forms arrange themselves vertically. Just where depends on their tolerance to being exposed to air and/or water, heat, and wave shock, as well as the usual biological limits of predation and competition for food and living space. A splash zone just above high tide is home for periwinkle snails and beach hoppers that can withstand the powerful shock of pounding waves and episodic wetting. Splash zone inhabitants are transitional creatures, but they are more attuned to life on land than in the sea. Mussels cling to rocks in the high-tide zone covered by water only at high tide. Tidepools form in rocky beach outcroppings to shelter life forms found only in these environments. You can see more animal species here than in a single visit anywhere. Tidepool dwellers must cope with changes in water temperature, salinity, and oxygen content. Here are barnacles, limpets, sea urchins, sea stars, and sea palms.
Beaches
Life on sandy beaches also observes wet and dry zones based on tides and waves. The lower beach is often wetted while upper beaches resemble narrow deserts between sea and lush inland forests. Clams and mole crabs burrow into wet lower beaches. Sanderlings follow retreating wave lines to forage washed-up organisms.
Sea Cliffs
Northern park beaches tend to be rocky and backed by sea cliffs. Southern beaches tend to be backed by bluffs. More than half of the park's birds are marine species, some of which nest—often in great crowds—in sea cliffs: murres, cormorants, puffins, auklets, gulls, and pigeon guillimots.
Hot Spots: Gold Bluff Beach, Enderts Beach, Coastal Trail
Details mentioned in this article were accurate at the time of publication
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