‘Someone’s got to help’: Minnesota volunteers give injured, orphaned animals a chance
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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. That's the theme of our series “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
Julie Dickie cares for a lot of orphaned babies — and right now they’re really hungry.
Eleven spotted fawns all need to be bottle fed with a special formula. Nearby, two young trumpeter swans chatter while a baby otter plays in a cage. Early summer is the busiest time of the year at her Northwoods Wildlife Rescue near Menahga.
Every animal arrives with a story, almost always a sad one. "Mom was killed by a vehicle,” Dickie reads from a chart in the fawn enclosure. Another was dropped off at a Department of Natural Resources office with no explanation. “Mom killed by coyotes,” she says, going down the list.
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Taking care of so many needy creatures can be overwhelming. But for Dickie and her trained staff, saving injured and orphaned wildlife is their calling. There’s not much money — the nonprofit scrapes by on grants and help from local volunteers — but there is a payoff: The joy of giving animals a chance to heal and return to the wild.
$1,000 to raise one baby otter
Dickie, 63, has been caring for injured or abandoned wildlife for half of her life. She started in Florida. The work was hard, and when she and her husband Jeff moved to Minnesota, they promised each other they’d never do it again.
But then a local DNR conservation officer learned of her background and urged Dickie to consider getting licensed in Minnesota. So she did in 2017, drawn back to work that was always close to her heart.
"We did 14 animals that year, just for the DNR, and then the next year it was like 140 and then the next year it was like 200 and I think we hit 1,240 or 1270 last year,” she said.
Dickie is licensed by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It’s against the law to possess wild animals without a permit.
Conservation officers appreciate the work done by wildlife rehabilitators. Wadena-based DNR conservation officer Landyn Saewert regularly brings animals to Northwoods Wildlife Rescue. He’s one of the 15 to 20 conservation officers across northern Minnesota who depend on Dickie to rehabilitate abandoned or injured wildlife.
“It sure makes you feel good when you bring her a snowy owl, or something like that, and she's able to send you a picture of it when it’s released,” Saewert said. “That's kind of cool.”
About 15 people help transport animals that need to be picked up somewhere, or delivered to another organization. Four local residents help feed animals, including Elizabeth Johnson. She lives nearby and learned about Northwoods a few years ago after her car struck an owl at night.
She was so impressed with the work done there that she decided to volunteer, despite knowing nothing about caring for wild animals. “The first time feeding the fawns, I was afraid of these little bitty fawns,” laughed Johnson, 61, a retired civil engineer who lives near the center.
Now she’s responsible for two feedings a day. The fawns wear color-coded collars to help track the care given to each fawn. “They're helpless, so someone's got to help them,” Johnson said. “I guess that's the motherly part of me, wanting to help.”
Despite the all-volunteer staff, the work carries a financial burden. Dickie doesn't get paid, and noted the center and its all-volunteer crew don’t receive government funding.
Just the food to raise one fawn will cost $500 to $600. They spend about $1,200 a year on medication for sick fawns. It costs $1,000 to raise a single baby otter to the age where it can be released. Dickie says the organization has a yearly fundraiser, but she and her husband often pay the bills.
“Fortunately, I have a very supportive husband, because it's a huge financial commitment. I mean, basically our retirement and our vacations are right here,” said Dickie. “So he understands that, and he kind of falls in love with some of them too. He just doesn't like to admit it.”
‘Saved her twice’
Dickie has state and federal licenses to care for animals. She often sends animals to organizations that specialize in care for certain species. Most raptors are sent to the University of Minnesota Raptor Center.
She has taken in seven bear cubs this year and all were transported to a special enclosure in the northern Minnesota woods where they can be fed with minimal human interaction. In 2023, she raised a pine marten that couldn’t be released because it was habituated to humans. Marty McFly is now part of the Minnesota Zoo.
Wild animals that are trained to see humans as a food source cannot be released back to the wild. In most cases they need to be euthanized.
“People get cute little raccoons, and they raise them as pets until they get to be about six months old, when they want to chew somebody's face off,” said Dickie. “Then they want to bring them to us and have us make them wild again. It’s not going to happen.”
Raccoons are one of the few animals Dickie won’t rehabilitate because they carry so many diseases and she doesn’t have the space to avoid spreading disease to other animals.
And too often people with good intentions kill fawns by giving them the wrong food, like whole milk from the grocery store. A fawn brought to the center recently had to be euthanized because someone was feeding it cow’s milk.
Dickie said she and one of her volunteers “cried for an hour” over it. “We did our best to try and save that fawn, but unfortunately it was so sick by the time it got to us, there was just nothing we could do to save it."
She urges people to leave fawns alone unless it’s obvious the mother is dead. The mother will sometimes leave a fawn for 24 to 48 hours, but they are not abandoned.
Despite the occasional setback, the successes keep her going. Releasing trumpeter swans into a lake is an unforgettable experience, she said.
There is “no better feeling” than releasing a rehabilitated animal that would have died without help but “now it has a chance," said Dickie.
She recalled a deer that walked up to the building two years after being rescued and released. "She had an arrow that pinned her mouth completely shut, and she had this little fawn with her.”
She and her husband weren't sure what to do because it's very difficult to catch a wild deer.
"But as soon as I started talking, she knew my voice,” said Dickie. “She let me come over and talk to her and stroke her, and he (her husband) pulled the arrow out. She let me take disinfectant, antibiotics and treat the wounds.”
The deer is fine, she’s identifiable on trail cameras by the unique scar from the arrow.
“So we’ve saved her twice,” said Dickie. “Did she know to come here for help? We'll never know, but those are the things that make us do this."
