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While
speaking with Barbara Maynes, public information officer at Olympic
National Park, we asked her to identify some of the wildlife in the
park.
Text from audio clip:
U-Haul Representative: "What other types
of wildlife can be found in the park, apart from the endemic species?
What other kinds of animals could people expect to see if they go to
the park."
Barbara: "Well, there is a wide range of animals here.
And I'll talk a little bit about what you can find in a rain forest.
One of the other noticeable residents of the rain forest is the Roosevelt
elk, and this is a type of elk that lives all around the Peninsula,
but it's fairly commonly seen in the rain forest. This is a large
elk and different, in some ways, from a Rocky Mountain elk, but they
can be found in herds in any of the rain forest valleys. Other things
that you can find, of course... There are many different kinds of salmon
that live in the streams. There are black bears here that are not usually
easy to see, but if you go to some of the high country areas of the
park, such as Hurricane Ridge, in the early part of the summer, sometimes
you can look down into the lush, subalpine meadows below Hurricane Ridge
and pick out bears. Sometimes four or five of them at a time that you
can see looking down into the valleys, feeding on the new spring grasses
and other plants that are growing in the valleys. On the coast, you
can find seals, seal lions. There are areas where you can find sea otters,
if you are lucky. Sometimes in the spring, people are lucky enough to
look out a little bit further off shore and see gray whales migrating.
So there's a huge diversity of Plants & Animals in the park."
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