Central Canadian Shield forests
This ecoregion consists of rolling hills, lakes, bogs and rocky outcrops covering a large curved swathe on the Canadian Shield from eastern Manitoba and Northern Ontario running southeastwards through Thunder Bay District to the north shore of Lake Superior and then northeastwards into western Quebec. The area has a cool climate with summer temperatures averaging around 13°C dropping to a very cold -17°C in winter, with the hills around Lac Seul in northwestern Ontario being warmer and wetter than most of the area. Average rainfall in the eastern side of the ecoregion is 550mm per year, rising to 750mm in the centre (near Lake Nipigon for example), up to 900mm in the west. Specific areas include Lake Nipigon and Big Trout Lake (Ontario). These forest contrast with more severe boreal forest ecoregions such as the Eastern Canadian Shield taiga to the north, which covers most of Northern Quebec and Labrador.
Boreal woodland caribou
Since the 1940s the decline of "Rangifer tarandus caribou" range occupancy in Ontario has been recognized. There are two populations of woodland caribou, the forest-tundra ecotype and the sedentary forest-dwelling ecotype. The boreal woodland caribou population (forest-dwelling), estimated at approximately 3,000, make up approximately one-quarter of Ontario’s woodland caribou, was designated as threatened in 2000 (and likely to become endangered if limiting factors are not reversed) by the Federal Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada and by the Province of Ontario. The migratory forest-tundra woodland caribou, numbering about 20,000 in 2007 is found in northern Ontario, on the coastal plains south of Hudson Bay was not considered to be endangered.