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Access Points

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White Bear Forest Trails Map

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History

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The White Bear Forest takes its name from the last chief of the Teme augama Anishnabai tribe before the arrival of Europeans to this area. Since the 19th century, when Chief White Bear and his family used this forest as part of their hunting and trapping grounds, humans have done little to change this landscape.

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In 1928, the Gillies Bros. logging company won the logging rights to about 500 square kilometers (200 square miles) of forest surrounding White Bear Lake (now Cassels Lake) and Rabbit Lake. While scheduling adjacent land for logging, Gillies .preserved the 800 hectares (2000 acres) of the White Bear Forest in its virgin state for its employees and local residents to enjoy. However, an old wagon road was built through the forest from the town of Temagami to the narrows between Cassels Lake and Rabbit Lake, so that a log dam could be built to enable saw logs to be driven from surrounding lakes to the Ottawa River. This road, built before 1920, is now barely recognizable.

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Sawmill on Cassels Lake

 

The Future

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When this guidebook was first created the future of the White Bear Forest hung in the balance. In the 1990’s the White Bear Forest was allocated for logging but the plan to log the forest was opposed by many local citizens who felt that the short term gains of cutting the forest were not in their best interests. Located on the doorstep of the town this magnificent stand of ancient forest is very accessible to the public, and valuable for tourism.

 

To address the interests of all concerned parties, the government agreed to establish a partnership consisting of ten different interest groups to determine the method of harvest for the White Bear Forest. It soon became evident that the majority of partnership members were in favour of saving the forest for values other than logging. Under pressure,’the government agreed with the wisdom of the partnership and established a moratorium on logging the White Bear Forest which expired at the end of 1996. The forest was ultimately protected as a conservation reserve under the Living Legacy process.

 

Learn about how the White Bear Forest escaped logging more than once in an interview with Sloan Watters.

 

Natural History

 

White Pine (Pinus strobus)

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                                                                                                      Red Pine (Pinus resinosa)

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What is an Old-Growth Forest?

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Old-growth forests are characterized by a number of structural and ecological features. The most obvious feature is the abundance of huge, old trees that tower far above the lower levels of the forest. Among these huge trees are large dead standing trees called snags, and fallen trees called logs, both of which provide valuable wildlife habitat and contribute to the recycling of nutrients within the forest ecosystem. Because of the great length of time that it takes for these forests to evolve, we often think of them as unchanging environments. On the contrary, the old-growth forest is a very dynamic system in which constant changes are taking place; large and small scale disturbances change the structure and composition of the forest, renewal and recycling of young and old trees continually revitalizes the forest, and the lives of the inhabitants are continually reshaping and responding to it. All of these processes result in the diverse and highly productive ecosystems we call old-growth forests.

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Succession

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All forests once had their beginnings. Thousands of years ago, this area was Just being released from the weight of huge glaciers. As they retreated, they scraped the bare rock, leaving it devoid of any vegetation. Before the forests could establish themselves, this area had to go through a slow soil building process that ecologists refer to as primary succession.

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Along the trail, you will see occasional openings in the forest where there are areas of exposed rock covered with lichens and mosses. These plants play an important role in building the soil. Lichens use acids to slowly eat away at the rock, making that important first foothold that will allow other plants to later colonize the ground. Once there is a very thin soil layer, other small plants can establish themselves on the rock and add to the soil-building process. These kinds of plant communities are fairly typical of what ecologists call an “early successional stage”. When new plants are able to establish themselves and take over the existing plant community, we say the community has moved into another . successional stage. Over thousands of years, the ecosystem changes gradually as each plant community is replaced by another plant community, until finally, in many cases the existing ecosystem is capable of creating the conditions needed to perpetuate itself This is often referred to as the climax stage. This old-growth forest may be an example of an ecosystem which is able to sustain itself in the absence of a major disaster, and thus has reached the climax stage.

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Burnover – Red Pine Regeneration

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Once the forest has established itself, there are disturbances that can affect the process of succession. Fire is one such disturbance, and it plays an important role in the ecology of these forests.

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When a catastrophic fire sweeps through a forest, destroying almost all of the vegetation, the process of succession begins again. Because the soil has already been built up, this kind of succession is referred to as “secondary succession”, whereas starting with bare rock is called “primary succession”.

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Quite often forest fires are not catastrophic. There are many old red pine trees along the trail that show the signs of surviving at least one fire, and sometimes more. Often a fire passes through a forest it may consume most of the fuel lying on the forest floor, but it won’t always climb all the way up into the canopy and kill the trees.

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Although their lives are spared, the large pines are left with a scar that shows us that a fire has passed though. The shape of the scars left behind on the trees resembles a “church door” and are sometimes referred to as such. This happens as a result of the fire burning through the bark and killing a portion of the cambium. The cambium is the growing layer that lies just underneath the bark.

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Forest fires are a very important component in the ecology of the forest, especially in red pine forests. In order for red pine to regenerate, the seeds from the pine cone must fall to the ground and then send down a root into the sandy mineral soil. Most of the time, the many layers of decomposing needles and leaves (the duff layer), form a thick mat covering the mineral soil. The tiny seeds of the red pine failing on this mat of duff do not have enough energy stored in them to be able to send their root down through the duff layer to the mineral soil, and therefore rarely germinate.

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You may see trees not scarred by fire in amongst the scarred trees. These trees may have seeded in after the fire burnt away the duff layer and exposed the mineral soil that seeds require for germination.

 

An absence of young red pine seedlings may suggest that the suppression of fires over the past 75 years has reduced the chances of red pine forest regeneration.

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Lightning Strike

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Most forest fires are a result of natural causes in the form of lightning strikes. About three quarters of all forest fires start this way, with the balance resulting from human causes. Lightning can cause varying degrees of damage to trees when it strikes. A bolt of lightning often causes a deep twisting crack that extends the length of the tree.

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Dead Wood

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Although the White Bear Forest has been left in a relatively pristine state, the trailside view can give a false impression of the forest floor. The trail has been cleared to allow an easy and identifiable passage through the forest. In doing so, logs have been removed from the pathway. To see them, you must look closely along the sides of the trail. In no way are logs the useless remains of once great trees. Dead wood is an essential component of the old-growth forest. When a tree dies, the nutrients that went into the tree during its lifetime are returned to the soil to be reused by the living forest. Decaying logs are places where small animals can find soft wood to hollow out into shelters. Logs are also host to many microorganisms that play a vital role in breaking down the woody material, making the nutrients available to the living forest.

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Snags

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In many cases, snags or standing dead trees, are the predecessors of logs. The sturdy structure of trees can allow them to remain standing after death for many decades. Like logs, their usefulness does not end with the life of the tree. It doesn’t take long for insects to infiltrate the wood, and in fact this may already have happened before the death of the tree, when it was in a weakened state. It isn’t long after the insects arrive that woodpeckers come to visit the snag. Deep elongated cavities and wood chips are signs that birds have been busy looking for carpenter ants and bark beetles. After the snag has been standing for some time and the wood grows even softer from decay, it will become a suitable site for other birds and animals to excavate homes. Large old pine snags also make ideal homes for eagles and osprey which like to nest atop high lookout perches.

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Windthrow

Fire is not the only disturbance that can help regenerate the forest. Smaller scale disturbances that can facilitate this regeneration are happening all the time. A strong wind, for example, can cause a shallow rooted tree to topple over under the strain. If the tree remains intact it can pull its entire root mat up with it when it falls. This type of disturbance is called a windthrow, and is not simply the dramatic end of a tree’s life, but an ideal site for forest renewal. In the wake of the fallen tree, the mineral soil, once covered by roots, rocks and duff, now lies bare, exposed to seeds looking for a site to germinate. Not only does the fallen tree expose the seed bed, but it also clears space in the canopy so that increased light resources can filter down to feed the new young plants.

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White Pine Regeneration

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Hilltops and ridgetops are often places where you will find pine forests. This may not be surprising now that we know a little more about the conditions under which the pines like to grow.

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At the tops of hills and ridges there is usually a greater availability of sunlight and the soils are generally well drained. Exposed ridges and hills can be very susceptible to erosion by wind and rain. The wind and rain wash away enough of the duff layer to expose mineral soil, allowing the pine seeds to germinate. In the absence of fire, pines must, take advantage of other disturbances and conditions that will allow them to regenerate. While red pine relies more heavily on fire to provide the conditions for regeneration, white pine has the ability to penetrate through a thicker duff layer and grow under poorer light conditions. These characteristics explain why there is a Much greater abundance of white pine seedlings over red pine seedlings. Old growth white pine is not completely dependent on fire for regeneration, and is able to rely on natural minor disturbances to self-perpetuate.

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Lowland Cedar Grove

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The White Bear Forest is not composed solely of old-growth red and white pine. There are several forest types that you will see along your hike You may notice as you walk along that the different forest types tend to be associated with specific areas of the landscape. For example, the white and red pine tend to be found higher up o the hills and ridge tops, but are not so prevalent in the valleys. Conversely, species like eastern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) are more abundant in the lowland areas of valleys and lakeshores. The change in species composition from higher to lower ground is a result of the habitat preferences of different species. On the slope, the well drained sandy soils are preferred by the pine, whereas in the wet lowland areas, the cedars thrive in the deep moist soils.

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Cedar groves can be recognized by their dark, almost enchanted look. This is a result of the incoming sunlight being blocked by the dense foliage. The shade helps keep the soil cool and moist, and affects the kinds of understory vegetation that is able to grow in these conditions. By eliminating the competition from many other trees and shrubs, the mature cedar trees virtually ensure a place for their seeds to grow.

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Black Spruce Layering

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Black spruce (Picea mariana) is another tree species found in the White Bear Forest that grows well in wet areas and can tolerate shade. In addition to the production of seeds, this tree has a very unique and interesting method of reproduction. Black spruce is a conifer that can usually be recognized by its drooping lower branches. You will often find it growing in a carpet of moss which absorbs and holds onto rain water instead of letting it seep through the soil. These moist beds of moss make excellent seed beds for black spruce. As the spruce trees grow, their drooping lower branches touch the ground and are often covered by moss and leaf litter. Once covered, these lower branches turn skyward and begin growing a new tree. This is called black spruce layering. You can look for examples of this by watching for large spruce trees surrounded by concentric rings of smallerspruce trees – the smaller trees are those that have sprouted from the lower branches of the larger tree. If you look closely at the lower trunks of the smaller trees you can actually see them curving underneath the moss, heading back towards the parent tree.

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Land of the Giants

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In some of the low-lying areas where pines do occasionally become established, they can grow quite well, enjoying the deeper soils and the influx of nutrients that is provided to them from upslope. It is in one of these low flat areas that some of the largest white and red pines of the White Bear Forest can be found. The section of trail on the north side of Flood Lake is home to many of these giants. Several trees between 85 cm and 100 cm diameter can be seen from the trail, and about 15 in to the south of the trail lies one of the largest pines measured in the White Bear Forest, a white pine measuring 115 cm across at chest height.

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Old-growth Vertical Stratification

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The most obvious characteristic of the old-growth pine forest is without doubt the huge old trees. The crowns of these big old trees can often be seen poking up above a lower canopy made up of the crowns of smaller but mature trees. Underneath these trees, perhaps in gaps left by fallen trees, younger trees .struggle to poke their heads up into the canopy to catch some of the precious sunlight. The dynamic changes that occur within the forest work to arrange the crowns of the trees into this multilayered canopy. There can be subtle differences found at different levels in the canopy that provide animals with a diversity of habitats in which to live. The existence of different layers is called vertical stratification – it likely facilitates a high species diversity within the old-growth forest.

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Towering Pine

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The largest measured tree in the White Bear Forest can be found on the north shore of a small inlet leading into Flood Lake. At chest height it measures 115 cm (almost 4 feet) across! A tree of these proportions could well have had its beginnings around the time Samuel Champlain sailed down the St. Lawrence.

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Old Portage

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Within the White Bear Forest lies one of Canada’s oldest known portages, dating back some 3000 years. In the days before the logging dam was installed, the water level in the narrows between White Bear Lake and Snake Island Lake was quite low. In the early winter, this section of water was the first to freeze, preventing the Natives from paddling their canoes through to Temagami. Instead, they used this portage to transport their canoes and gear to Snake Island Lake, and paddled up its length to Temagami.

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Historical Dam

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The shallow bay at the end of Snake Island Lake is scattered with cut stumps protruding from the surface of the water. In the 1920’s, a dam was built at the narrows between White Bear Lake (Cassels Lake) and Rabbit Lake to float logs from the surrounding area out to the Ottawa River. The water level in several lakes around the town of Temagami was raised several feet. The Gillies’ Bros. logging company then cut the trees from the flooded forest area leaving behind the stumps you see ‘in the water.

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Poison Pond

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Poison Pond has been named for very good reasons. This small watering hole, enjoyed by moose and beaver, is also home to some locally rare plants.Poison ivy is abundant along the shoreline and should be negotiated with caution. Water parsnip, wild mint, spikenard, and striped maple can all be found in close proximity to this pond, but are seldom seen in other parts of the White Bear Forest.

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Old Logging Mill

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The old sawmill shown on page I of this guide was operated by the Gillies Bros. lumber company from 1947 until 1957 to handle the timber cut from the surrounding forest. It is no longer standing.

This guidebook has had minor updates, including a revision of maps that reflects the current state of the trails, but is largely the same as guide originally released in the 1990’s. The White Bear Forest trails pamphlet released recently has additional brief information about each of the trails, and is recommended reading.