Tula Lake State Natural Area

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Situated within a wilderness setting, Tula Lake is an undisturbed 15-acre bog lake surrounded by open bog and an extensive northern wet forest. Encircling the open water is a bog mat of blueberry, cranberry, sundew, pitcher plant, sedges, cotton grass, and sphagnum moss. A wet forest of tamarack and black spruce, with occasional white spruce and balsam fir surrounds the lake and bog. Typical understory plants include leather-leaf, Labrador-tea, bogbean and grass pink. The surrounding upland dry-mesic forest of red oak, aspen, and white pine is recovering from past logging and fire. As a freeze-out lake there is essentially no fishery but the lake is used migrating waterfowl including common loons. An especially high number of mammals use the area including white-tailed deer, black bear, otter, mink, muskrat, coyote, red fox, snowshoe hare, bobcat, and fisher. Birds using the site includ bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus), osprey (Pandion haliaetus), and state-threatened red-shouldered hawk (Buteo lineatus). Tula Lake is owned by the DNR and was designated a State Natural Area in 1982.