LISTEN: Utah’s largest wildlife rehabilitation facility faces uncertain future
Feb 12, 2024, 4:11 PM | Updated: 7:09 pm
A long-eared owl being cared for at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah in Ogden in 2023. Northern Utah's only non-profit for nursing injured animals back to health must move to a new facility by March, 2024. (Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah)
(Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah)
OGDEN — Northern Utah’s only nonprofit for nursing injured animals back to health has finally received an extension on its use of an Ogden facility, six months after it was told it had to vacate the building. But the organization still has to scramble to prepare to move to a new facility by March 2024.
The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah was told at the end of February it had to relocate from its facility at 1490 Park Blvd. in Ogden, a space it had occupied since 2010, by Wednesday. The building will be bulldozed so the neighboring George S. Eccles Dinosaur Park at 1544 Park Blvd. can create a 144-stall parking lot and a storage facility.
The center takes in about 4,000 injured animals annually, including around 150 different species, and has treated more than 34,000 wild animals since its inception in 2009. But all that has been put to a halt as the center has had to scramble to try to find a new location to house its animals. During part of its busiest season, April through September, it had to refuse to accept new wildlife patients.
But on Tuesday, the center learned it had been granted an extension until March 7, 2024, to prepare a new facility, through a forbearance agreement signed by Ogden city attorney Gary Williams.
This is the end of a chapter; it’s not the end of the book. This is a Band-Aid and we’ll make it work until we can get that forever home.
– DaLyn Marthaler, executive director, Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah
DaLyn Marthaler, executive director of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah, called the forbearance agreement “critical.” She expressed her relief that her team doesn’t have to exhaust its budget paying rent at a temporary facility, and that it’s one step closer to being able to rehabilitate more animals.
“I can breathe for a minute,” Marthaler said. “Now we’ve gotten that through, I was able to actually get a decent night’s sleep for the first time in months. Now we have a little bit more time to get things taken care of and try to get up and operating as soon as we can.”
