page_title: Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness
section_title: Biology
hierarchical_section_title: Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness / Biology
caption_attribution_description: Cirsium pitcheri Pitcher's Thistle (endangered), Warren Dunes Michigan. USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, Romy Myszka
context_page_description: The Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness is a 3,450-acre listed wilderness area within the Manistee National Forest. It is located north of Ludington, Michigan, and is best known for its 4 miles of undeveloped Lake Michigan shoreline.
context_section_description: The older Nordhouse Dunes, farther away from Lake Michigan, have had time for the process of plant succession to produce a forest ecosystem.  The local climate supports beech, sugar maple, red oak, and white oak trees, mixed with a thin sprinkling of evergreens such as the red pine and Michigan's state tree, the white pine.
  Active dune areas closer to the lake are dotted with early-succession plants and trees such as the juniper bush and the jack pine.  Of special interest is one of the two largest known remaining populations of the Pitcher's thistle, a threatened species listed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 3,100 Nordhouse thistle plants of this species were inventoried in a 1991 counting exercise. 
  In animal life, the primary browser is the familiar whitetail deer, mixed with typical examples of Michigan small game such as the coyote, fox, porcupine, and raccoon.
caption: Pitcher's Thistle (Cirsium pitcheri) on beach
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