The flora and fauna of Whitmore are in one of the most diverse forest and animal habitats in the world. The growth on Whitmore's mid-elevation slopes includes ponderosa pine, cedar, redbud, dogwood, laurel, and white and blue oaks. Whitmore is often identified as the Black Forest (Germany) of California.

The wildlife includes grey squirrels, mountain lions, bobcats, skunks, deer, hares, turkeys, pigs, rattlesnakes, woodpeckers, owls, hummingbirds, nuthatches, and titmice. Animals and birds migrate from the Sacramento Valley up into the Whitmore foothills and then toward Burney and Mt. Lassen as the summer heats up.

Prominent among the native plants are manzanita, poison oak, wild blackberries, and mountain apples (rocks) and boulders.

A book that describes almost everything found in Whitmore isWestern Forests, by Stephen Whitney. He identifies the area as Sierran Montane Forest. Whitmore's elevation of nineteen-hundred to twenty-five hundred feet puts it right at the snow line. Wet springs and dry summers give Whitmore a growing season of up to seven months.

Residents of the Redding area have come to Whitmore to hunt and fish since the 1920s. During the day it is about ten degrees cooler than the valley, it cools off at night, and there are pleasant camping areas.
Some stories told by past and present residents:

Jesse was real ornery, but he treated me nice. I was up there, and we was going down the Hat Creek there angling (fishing), throwing logs across the road so the water wouldn't wash the road out. The dog growled, and there was about an eight-point buck run out across ahead of us. I said I'd sure like to get one of those, and Jesse said, "I'll tell you what, you come up and we'll open the hunting season when you come and close it when you leave, but you can't take it out, cause they don't bother with people that live here." Anyway, so he treated me real good.

In the late eighteen-hundreds, the Meinekens set up their apple orchard on the old Hosto place. Their grandson, Bud Meineken, said:

They must have had a [surveyors] transit. There was probably thirty acres of them. Old time apples like Alexanders, that was one of their big cash crops. The deer were real thick then [probably 1880-1900]. They'd eat them up so bad that they couldn't save them. So this gun, this 45.70, I couldn't even lift. Grandfather'd put a forked stick there, this is what grandma told me. He d wait until two of them [deer] were lined up, and then shoot both of them.

We've had some problems with hunters, deer and pigs. Some are out for the big husks on the pigs, but most are out for the food. It's too dangerous to have people out there shooting on the property.

Rattlesnakes

There was a den of rattlesnakes right up above the reservoir. Every summer those darn things would come down to the house. One of the first jobs I had was at the house of the ditch tender. I had to get under this house, put new posts in, . . .