Animals & Plants of Olympic National Park
The 50 animals, plants, and fungi you can find at Olympic National Park, with sizes, diets, and whether you should worry. See the full park guide at Olympic National Park.
Olympic is a rainforest, a coastline, and a mountain range in one park: banana slugs and giant Sitka spruce in the Hoh, sea otters and ochre sea stars on the outer coast, and mountain goats on Hurricane Ridge. It is one of the richest places in the lower 48 for sheer variety of living things.
Turn this into a game: Play Olympic National Park Bingo →Common questions
Which animals at Olympic should kids give space to?
At Olympic National Park, give space to American black bear, Elk, Mountain goat, Coyote, and Harbor seal. American black bear: Black bears are usually shy and would rather leave than meet you. Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild. Mountain goat: A mountain goat looks calm but is a large wild animal with sharp horns, so keep your distance, at least 50 yards, and never get between a goat and its kid. Coyote: Coyotes almost always run from people. Harbor seal: Harbor seals are wild animals with strong jaws, and they bite to defend themselves. (per NPS species pages).
What do the most interesting Olympic residents eat?
At Olympic National Park, the most interesting eaters are Bald eagle, Elk, Sea otter, and Banana slug. Bald eagle eats fish, ducks, gulls, small mammals, carrion. Elk eats grasses, forbs, shrubs, tree bark in winter. Sea otter eats sea urchins, clams, mussels, crabs, snails. Banana slug eats fallen leaves, mushrooms, dead plants, animal droppings, moss. (per NPS species pages).
What is the strangest thing about Olympic wildlife?
The strangest true thing about Olympic National Park: Chinook salmon: Most Chinook spawn in autumn across every coastal river in Olympic National Park, but the Hoh, Queets, and Quinault Rivers also get smaller spring and summer runs. Steelhead: Local rainbow trout in Olympic's rivers usually weigh 1 to 3 pounds, but a steelhead of the same species can come back from the ocean weighing up to 30 pounds. (per NPS species pages).
Anything here that bites?
Keep away
- American black bear: Black bears are usually shy and would rather leave than meet you.
- Bobcat: Very low.
- Columbian black-tailed deer: Usually calm around people, but they are wild animals, not park mascots.
- Coyote: Coyotes almost always run from people.
- Elk: Elk look calm but they are large and wild.
- Harbor seal: Harbor seals are wild animals with strong jaws, and they bite to defend themselves.
- Mountain goat: A mountain goat looks calm but is a large wild animal with sharp horns, so keep your distance, at least 50 yards, and never get between a goat and its kid.
- Sea otter: Sea otters stay in the water and keep away from people, so a kid on shore is very unlikely to get near one.
Don't touch or eat
- California mussel: Harmless to touch, but the shells are sharp and the rocks they cover are slick, so tide-pool footing is the real hazard.
- Ensatina: It cannot bite or sting, but its tail oozes a sticky, milky poison when it is scared.
- Fly agaric: Poisonous if eaten.
- Rough-skinned newt: Never put one near your mouth or an open cut.
- Subalpine lupine: Do not eat any part of it.
- Western toad: Harmless to touch, but the two glands behind its eyes ooze a thick white poison meant to deter predators, so wash hands after handling and don't touch your eyes or mouth first.
Bites if handled
- Bald eagle: A bald eagle will not come after you.
- Douglas squirrel: Harmless if left alone.
- Northern flying squirrel: No real risk.
- Northern spotted owl: No real worry.
- Pacific marten: None.
- Peregrine falcon: None to worry about.
- Snowshoe hare: None.
- Western fence lizard: It has no venom.
Everything else on this page is harmless. What each group means.
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Mammal American black bear
Ursus americanus
The bear you're most likely to meet east of the Rockies, a strong tree-climber that eats mostly plants and comes in black, brown, or cinnamon.
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Bird American dipper
Cinclus mexicanus
A stream-gray songbird that walks along the bottom of cold mountain creeks to hunt, the only songbird in North America that does.
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Plant Avalanche lily
Erythronium montanum
A white mountain lily that blooms at the very edge of the melting snow, chasing the snowline uphill all summer as the drifts pull back.
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Bird Bald eagle
Haliaeetus leucocephalus
The white-headed fish hawk that is the national bird of the United States, common along the lakes of Voyageurs and the coasts of Olympic and Katmai.
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Invertebrate Banana slug
Ariolimax columbianus
A long yellow slug, sometimes as big as a real banana, that glides across the damp floor of the redwood forest and cleans up what falls there.
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Plant Beargrass
Xerophyllum tenax
A mountain plant that is not a grass but a lily, sending up a tall creamy plume only every few years, its tough leaves woven into watertight baskets and hats.
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Plant Bigleaf maple
Acer macrophyllum
A Pacific Northwest maple with the largest leaves of any maple, often draped in moss and ferns in the rainforests of Olympic and North Cascades.
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Mammal Bobcat
Lynx rufus
A small wildcat about twice the size of a house cat, common but rarely seen, that can bring down prey many times its own weight.
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Fish Bull trout
Salvelinus confluentus
A char, not a true trout, that needs the coldest, cleanest water in the mountains, so finding one is itself a kind of water-quality report.
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Invertebrate California mussel
Mytilus californianus
The big blue-black mussel that packs Pacific rocks by the thousands, anchored by threads so strong they inspired medical glue.
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Amphibian Cascades frog
Rana cascadae
A brown, black-spotted frog of cold high-mountain meadow ponds, once common through the Cascades and now vanishing from parts of its range.
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Fish Chinook salmon
Oncorhynchus tshawytscha
The biggest Pacific salmon, called king salmon, whose Elwha River run climbed back over a hundred-year-old dam site within a few years of its removal.
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Fish Coho salmon
Oncorhynchus kisutch
A silver ocean salmon that comes home each winter to the small creeks under the redwoods, turning brick-red and hook-jawed to spawn once and die.
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Mammal Columbian black-tailed deer
Odocoileus hemionus columbianus
The coastal rainforest subspecies of mule deer, common on foggy meadow edges from Olympic to Redwood, easy to tell apart by its all-black tail.
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Mammal Coyote
Canis latrans
The wild dog you're most likely to hear at a national park — a coyote, at home in the desert, the mountains, and the edges of towns.
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Mammal Douglas squirrel
Tamiasciurus douglasii
A small, loud tree squirrel of West Coast conifer forests, known for cutting green cones by the hundred and scolding every hiker who walks under its tree.
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Plant Douglas-fir
Pseudotsuga menziesii
One of the tallest trees on Earth, not actually a true fir, whose cones carry little three-pointed flaps a Native story calls the tails and legs of hiding mice.
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Mammal Elk
Cervus canadensis
A large deer of mountain meadows whose bulls grow branching antlers and, each fall, bugle a high whistling call across the valley.
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Amphibian Ensatina
Ensatina eschscholtzii
A lungless salamander that breathes through its skin, a textbook 'ring species' whose subspecies loop around California's Central Valley without quite meeting.
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Fungus Fly agaric
Amanita muscaria
The storybook red mushroom with white spots, found in northern conifer and birch woods. It is joined to tree roots and poisonous to eat.
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Invertebrate Giant green anemone
Anthopleura xanthogrammica
A bright green tide-pool anemone that farms algae inside its own body for the color and eats crabs whole with a ring of stinging tentacles.
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Fungus Golden chanterelle
Cantharellus formosus
A trumpet-shaped golden mushroom of Pacific Northwest conifer forests that lives joined to tree roots and trades food with the trees.
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Mammal Harbor seal
Phoca vitulina
A gray, dog-snouted true seal that rests hauled out on rocks and floating glacier ice, bobbing in Alaska fjords with ear holes and no ear flaps.
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Bird Harlequin duck
Histrionicus histrionicus
A slate-blue and chestnut sea duck that breeds by diving and bracing in fast mountain whitewater instead of calm water.
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Fungus Lobster mushroom
Hypomyces lactifluorum
Not really a mushroom at all, but a fungus that attacks another mushroom, turning it lobster-orange, firm, and good to eat.
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Fungus Lungwort lichen
Lobaria pulmonaria
A green, lettuce-like patch on old-growth trees that is three living things in one, and grows only where the air is clean.
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Bird Marbled murrelet
Brachyramphus marmoratus
A small seabird that nests far inland on a mossy old-growth limb, with no nest built around the egg, a nest nobody found until 1974.
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Fungus Methuselah's beard lichen
Usnea longissima
The longest lichen in the world, hanging in pale green beards from old rainforest branches, and a winter food for deer and flying squirrels.
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Mammal Mountain goat
Oreamnos americanus
A white, shaggy climber with black horns that lives on the steepest crags and pumice fields high on Mount Rainier, where almost nothing else can walk.
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Mammal Northern flying squirrel
Glaucomys sabrinus
A nocturnal glider of old-growth conifer forests that eats mostly underground fungus and, under a UV light, glows bubblegum pink.
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Bird Northern spotted owl
Strix occidentalis caurina
A nocturnal old-growth owl whose numbers keep falling even in protected forest, as a bigger relative from the East moves into its territory.
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Invertebrate Ochre sea star
Pisaster ochraceus
The purple or orange five-armed star of Pacific tide pools whose appetite for mussels decides what everything else on the rock gets to be.
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Amphibian Pacific chorus frog
Pseudacris regilla
A two-inch frog that shifts between green and brown and calls the ribbit Hollywood dubs onto night scenes everywhere, from sea level to alpine ponds.
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Mammal Pacific marten
Martes caurina
A tree-climbing weasel relative of the old-growth canopy, whose coastal population was feared extinct for 50 years before a trail camera caught one in 1996.
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Bird Peregrine falcon
Falco peregrinus
The fastest animal alive, a crow-sized falcon that folds its wings and stoops on other birds in midair, and a species that nearly vanished before recovering.
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Amphibian Rough-skinned newt
Taricha granulosa
A brown, warty-skinned newt with a bright orange belly that carries enough poison to kill a person, found in ponds and wet forests across the Pacific Northwest.
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Bird Rufous hummingbird
Selasphorus rufus
A copper-orange hummingbird that flies farther, relative to its size, than almost any other bird on Earth, from Mexico to Alaska and back every year.
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Mammal Sea otter
Enhydra lutris
The heaviest weasel-family animal alive, floating on its back in Olympic's coastal kelp beds with no blubber at all, just the densest fur of any mammal.
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Plant Sitka spruce
Picea sitchensis
The giant of the coastal fog belt, whose light, strong wood built early airplanes, with needles sharp enough to prick your finger.
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Mammal Snowshoe hare
Lepus americanus
A forest hare whose coat flips from brown to white on a clock set by daylight, not by snow, and whose oversized feet work like actual snowshoes.
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Bird Sooty grouse
Dendragapus fuliginosus
A large, dark forest grouse whose male hoots from bare yellow neck patches in spring, then walks itself uphill each fall to spend winter eating conifer needles.
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Fish Steelhead
Oncorhynchus mykiss
A rainbow trout that swims to the ocean and back, the one salmon-family fish here that can spawn more than once instead of dying after a single trip.
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Bird Steller's jay
Cyanocitta stelleri
A deep-blue mountain jay with a black crest and a loud voice, the campground bird that will eye your sandwich at Yosemite, Sequoia, and Crater Lake.
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Plant Subalpine lupine
Lupinus latifolius
The blue lupine that fills Mount Rainier's Paradise meadows in summer and quietly rebuilds raw volcanic soil by pulling nitrogen from the air.
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Bird Varied thrush
Ixoreus naevius
A ringing single whistle from deep, shaded old-growth forest, and a bird so well hidden most visitors only ever hear it.
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Reptile Western fence lizard
Sceloporus occidentalis
The blue-bellied lizard of West Coast rock walls and fence rails, whose blood carries a protein that kills the Lyme disease bacterium inside a feeding tick.
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Plant Western red cedar
Thuja plicata
The great rainforest tree of the Northwest Coast, called the tree of life, used by Coast Salish and other nations for canoes, longhouses, and baskets.
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Plant Western sword fern
Polystichum munitum
The knee-high fern that carpets the Northwest rainforest floor in deep green all year, each leaflet marked with a little hilt like a tiny sword.
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Invertebrate Western tiger swallowtail
Papilio rutulus
The big yellow-and-black butterfly of western streamsides whose caterpillar wears fake snake eyes and flips out a stinky orange horn when scared.
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Amphibian Western toad
Anaxyrus boreas
A stout, warty toad that walks instead of hopping, with poison glands behind each eye, ranging from lowland ponds to mountain lakes across the Cascades.