Owasippe Scout Reservation - Wildlife

Wildlife

Species of note within Owasippe include the Karner Blue butterfly, Bald Eagle, Eastern Box Turtle, Blanding's Turtle, and Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake. As is typical with most wilderness camps, deer, possum, raccoons, turkey and mice are prevalent. Other less common wildlife seen on the reservation include swans (Lake Wolverine) and sandhill cranes(in "Quaking Bogs" general area).

In 2002, the Nature Conservancy organized a BioBlitz to catalog the species of flora and fauna on the Reservation, and later produced a report listing the various species that were found. Owasippe is known to be one of the last locations in Michigan which hosts the oak savanna, a rare ecosystem, and the coastal plain marsh, which hosts unique flower and fauna dependent on acidic soils.

In early 2006 The Nature Conservancy further noted that the BioBlitz of 2002 was not the definitive work on the species within Owasippe. It is reasonable to assume that other species, those not particularly evident during the two weekends of the Bioblitz, were missed in the accounting of species.

In all, the BioBlitz reported 19 threaghtened and endangered species on the property.

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