Your Town Minocqua: Animals rest up at Northwoods Wildlife Center

For nearly 40 years, the Northwoods Wildlife Center has been helping injured animals and sharing what they've learned with visitors. What started with an injured deer fawn in 1979 has grown into a refuge for dozens of different species. "We have enclosures over here for pretty much anything and everything that could live up here in northern Wisconsin," said Courtney Wright, the center's interim executive director.

The center, just off of Highway 70 in Minocqua hosts about 600 animals each year, all with their own unique stories from injuries to orphans.

"Most of those come in May, June, July, August." Wright said. "We call it 'baby season' instead of springtime." New animals arrive nearly every day from around Wisconsin and other nature preserves from around the nation.

"We found what we thought were ducks on a local farm and we were raising them, and they turned out to be geese," said Sierra Krohn of Wisconsin Rapids, who made the trip to Minocqua for the first time. "I called up here and asked if could take them, and they said they could rehab them and return them to the wild."

Established by Dr. Rory Foster of Doctors Foster and Smith, the center has been helping their wild patients get back to their natural tendancies.

"We know exactly when we're about to put them outside," said Aidan Moore, a paid intern at the center. "They'll go from being cute and sweet to immediately remembering that they're a wild animal."

Among the current residents in the center's nursery, a hummingbird that was stunned when it flew into a window. The small bird was also being fed incorrectly. "The people who found him had good intentions," Moore clarified. "But if you ever find a hummingbird, give them sugar water and should be good to go."

Rory, a broad wing hawk missing his right eye, has been a resident since 2011 helping with the center's other focus: education.

"Our goal with our rehab animals is always to release them if they can but Rory couldn't survive," Wright said. So he stays with us, he's one of our education birds, going out to schools and other programs in the northwoods."

Tours are available along with an educational trail, complete with a life-size replica of a bald eagle nest, all to help our understand of the others who call the northwoods home. "A lot of the cases we get in at the center were caused by humans in some way," Wright said. "If we can help wildlife, instead of always inhibiting them, their habitat, their livelihood, we want to be able to do that as best as possible."

The center also relies on a team of volunteers for everything from answering phones to feeding animals to moving them around. "[We're] certainly always looking for more drivers, to help us transport animals.," Moore said. "That is something we always need."

Guided tours are available every half hour between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday. An indoor, self-guided tour is also available. The animals in the rehab program are not accessible to the public because shelter staff say they don't want them getting used to humans before they have a chance to be released back into the wild.

"People a lot of times tell us, 'We've been coming up here for 30 years, we never knew you existed," said Wright.