From relocation to renovation: Utah’s Wildlife Rehabilitation Center fights to rebuild

The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah is working around the clock to be able to resume nursing Utah’s injured wildlife back to health at its new home after having to relocate — and for the center’s staff and community volunteers, that process has included putting in a lot of elbow grease.

“I didn’t have power tools before this, and now I’ve got power tools,” DaLyn Marthaler, executive director of the nonprofit center, said in an interview with the Deseret News.

In early 2023, the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah was notified by the city of Ogden — the owner of the center’s previous location at 1490 Park Boulevard — that it would need to vacate the building that it had called home for more than a decade to make way for the expansion of its neighbor, the George F. Eccles Dinosaur Park.

“I was in shock,” Marthaler said. “Gut punched and sick. Could not believe it was real, I can’t even describe it.”

The center was eventually granted an extension — one that “came with so many mountains,” according to Marthaler — until early March of 2024 to be out of the property. The center’s time at the Park Boulevard property came to an end earlier this year and the building has since been demolished to make way for the dinosaur park’s new project .

The center typically helps wildlife from all across the northern half of Utah, including Utah County, covering the Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming borders. Prior to the center’s move, it helped an average of 4,000 animals every year, according to Marthaler. The nonprofit rehabilitates animals and places them in Utah and across the nation, whether that is back in the wild, in an educational setting or in a zoo.

The center “estimates that 3,000 – 4,000 human impacted animals went without the proper treatment and care in 2023 due to having to stop taking patients to prepare for this move,” according to its site .

How a moving company and a wildlife center joined forces

When Bijan Pishevar, the general manager of the Ogden branch of nationwide moving company Two Men and a Truck, saw a Reddit post last year about the wildlife center’s uncertain future, he knew that he and his team were going to help make the transition to a new location as easy as possible for Marthaler, her staff and the animals.

“We have a bunch of animal lovers,” Pishevar told the Deseret News. “This was a really cool opportunity for us to help even more in the community.”

Pishevar kept in touch with Marthaler for months after the initial notice. “It was probably six months to maybe even a year until we had the final move date down,” he said.

“I got the news and within a week, he was calling me,” Marthaler said of Pishevar. Two Men and a Truck offered their moving services to the center completely free of charge. The move took roughly two days.

“It was awesome, our guys all enjoyed it,” Pishevar said.

“We’ve had people, like Two Men and a Truck, that stepped up,” Marthaler said. “We would be not here, it would be a done deal if it wasn’t for that offering. Community support has been incredible.”

The Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Northern Utah’s new home — for now

The center’s new home is a collection of small residential-style buildings, and it’s a stark contrast to the old location — not just in appearance, but size as well. The center’s previous location was roughly about 10,000 square feet and the new location is just under 5,000 square feet, according to Marthaler.

“We were on a very nice, quiet river parkway. And it was very conducive and fit our lifestyle. Basically, it was perfect,” she said.

The new property on 332 S. Washington Boulevard — which includes a former vacuum repair shop and a 100-year-old lathe and plaster home that once belonged to the maternal grandparents of the Osmonds, according to Marthaler — is in the middle of Ogden’s “asphalt jungle,” she said. It’s been an adjustment to get used to the traffic, sirens and cars racing by.

When Marthaler first saw the property, “I was very concerned about the condition of everything, and if I knew then what I know now, I may not have bought it,” she said. “I mean, I’m glad we did now, because we can make this work.”

Marthaler has dubbed the property “pandora,” because “it’s the gift that keeps on giving” in terms of unexpected repairs. She and her team, along with volunteers, have done extensive renovations throughout the new property, including leveling floors, installing a raised bathtub, ripping down layers of wallpaper, rebuilding walls and more.

“We need people with construction or building skills. We’re doing the work ourselves just because we’ve got to save what little funds we have,” she said. “This was a very costly thing for us.”

Working to return to fully operational

“We’re still walking that line of not being ready to open, but still having animals to care for,” Marthaler said. Previously, most of the center’s intakes came from the public. When the center had to stop taking new intakes last May, it hit Marthaler hard. “I had to stop taking phone calls. I can’t know what’s going on and not help,” she said. “We need to be opened up.”

Now at their current location, the center’s staff are working as fast as they can to fully reopen, but the new property is not without significant limitations. Because of the downsizing and location change, the center isn’t able to help as many animals as before.

“There’s a lot of species we’re not going to be able to take,” Marthaler said. “We can’t do waterfowl, we don’t have any facilities to house them properly. We just can’t. So beaver, otter, any of the aquatics, we can’t do right now. So those are ones that are not going to have help until we get this other location running.”

With its current scaled down operations, the center is mainly taking what few intakes it can from its partners, including the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, Tracy Aviary and HawkWatch International, Marthaler said. Still, the center is buzzing with various cheeps of a dozen or so birds and a seemingly endless cycle of timers going off (each of the patients are on a very strict, customized eating schedule). Walkie-talkies — for the staff to communicate throughout the disjointed layout of the property — have become the center’s best friends.

The center is aiming toward being able to answer incoming calls for help soon, albeit it will only be able to help birds and small mammals at that point. “Normally in the summer, we are taking in about 20 patients per day,” she said. “This few we have here is not ‘open.’”

Many of the animals the center cares for, including the select fortunate patients at the new location, wind up at the center due to humanmade causes — about 80% of patients, according to Marthaler. The center nurses animals back to health in cases of electrocution, trees being cut down, glue traps and more.

One of the few lucky feathered patients at the new location is a baby hummingbird, whose nest was destroyed after being power-washed down. “If we weren’t available, he would be left to die,” Marthaler said while feeding the tiny hummingbird.

Building from the ground up

Although the past year and a half have been chock-full of challenges for the center, Marthaler, her team and the community have a bright spot in the future to look forward to — the center will one day have a home of its own.

“We do have super exciting news … we just actually purchased property,” Marthaler told me among the choir of chirps and caws. “We closed on it. Done deal. We got the title. It’s about 4 or 5 miles up the road, it’s on Harrisville Road,” she said. “It’s almost 3 acres ... We’re going to have to build. There’s just no purchasing what we had.”

When the time comes to move to the center’s eventual home, Two Men and a Truck will be there to assist with the move and bring the center’s journey full circle. “We’ll be involved for sure,” Pishevar said.

The new building will take years to build, so it will be a while until the center is able accommodate the range of species it was previously able to. But in the meantime, the center’s three-person staff is working to save and care for as many animals as it can at the interim location on Washington Boulevard. Two of their current patients include a great-horned owl recovering from electrocution and a bald eagle whose wing had to be partially amputated, who are affectionately referred to as “Big Girl” and “Sweet Girl” among the staff.

“I’ve got to do something,” Marthaler said. “Every day we’re closed, animals are dying, and that’s not acceptable. Not for the animals, not for our community, not for us.”