Beaver Creek State Natural Area

Beaver Creek features high quality natural communities associated with the Vilas-Oneida Outwash Plains landtype including northern dry-mesic forest, northern wet forest, and open bog. The mature, fire-related dry-mesic forest is dominated by large red pine, mostly 15-20 inches in diameter although some individuals are larger. The stand's year of origin is 1890. Associates include white pine, red maple, and white spruce. Although not common, there are pockets of white pine regeneration, especially on upland islands within the black spruce swamp forest. The dense shrub and sapling layer is primarily beaked hazelnut, red maple, and mountain maple with blueberry and sweet fern. Ground flora is variable and includes barren strawberry, trailing arbutus, early low blueberry, wintergreen, yellow bluebead lily, and spinulose wood fern. The lowland northern wet forest is dominated by older black spruce with several small inclusions of white cedar and a fringe of tamarack along the Little Deerskin River. Bryophytes (sphagnum, feather mosses, liverworts, and lichens) are a dominant group in the understory and on branches and trunks of black spruce. Several small spring runs start within the site. Situated within a kettle depression is a small but pristine poor fen surrounding a bog pond. The fen is dominated by white beak-rush and arrow-grass with wool-grass, few-seeded sedge, two-seeded bog sedge, mud sedge, cotton-grass, and numerous ericaceous shrubs. Several boreal birds are known to occur here including boreal chickadee and gray jay. Beaver Creek is owned by the US Forest Service and was designated a State Natural Area in 2007.