Idaho Couple Offer Rehab For Wildlife Pair Treat And Release Injured Animals

Human beings can do a real job on wild animals, hitting them with cars, poisoning them with pesticides, tangling them up in plastic beverage rings or shooting them just for fun with .22s or BB guns.

And as more people build that dream log cabin deeper in the Idaho woods, the encounters with wildlife increase.

The wild creatures are the undisputed underdogs.

Well aware of that, Linda and Doug Holden have created a haven in the forest near McCall to rehabilitate animals and birds while retaining their instincts so they can return to the wild.

They have taken care of injured and orphans species from sapsuckers to mountain lions.

“We never know. They may show up with an elephant. I wouldn’t be surprised,” Linda says.

Bringing the wounded back to health isn’t profitable. There is next to no government money for medical supplies or training.

In 1988, the Holdens bought 34 acres for the Snowdon Wildlife Sanctuary. They have treated and released bears, fox, deer, raccoons, numerous birds and raptors, such as owls and ospreys.

In the summer, Linda works for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation at Ponderosa State Park, showing her animals and explaining their plight to visitors.

“I think the kids are important, but I think we’ve overlooked the adults way too much,” she says. “I don’t think people are intransigent and uncaring. I think often they’re uninformed.”

She also talks to schools during the winter, bringing along habituated pets, such as Owlie North, a great-horned owl that lost one eye. Owls hunt for rodents in barrow pits along highways and are often hit by motorists.

Communities such as McCall are growing into the forest, and the natural order seems to have come under attack, the Holdens say.

People in the West have started to feed elk and deer during the winter, and some communities even want a “watchable herd” in the cold months to draw tourists. They wind up creating problems without realizing it.

“If you put out salt licks, you’re making a restaurant,” Linda said. “Our valley didn’t have large herds of elk. The cougars come to where wintering elk are. They may have to go through llamas and dogs to get there.”

She would like to see a study of how rehabilitated animals, such as lions or bears, fare after they are released.

Two cougar cubs were held at Snowdon last year after one attacked a goose on a farm and the other dined on the fringed leather bags of a Harley Davidson motorcycle parked outside a Forest Service station. Doug fed them through the winter and then recently flew them into the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness to release them. They were tagged but not fitted with radio-collars.

Ranchers dislike lions, but doing away with them is not a realistic answer, Linda says.

“The prevailing attitude is people don’t want you to kill kittens. But they don’t have enough zoos. That leaves us with putting them back in their environment,” she says.

Cougars are also a big-ticket item when it comes to care.

“They’re strictly carnivores and they have to have meat,” she says. “So we tried to provide them the opportunity to hunt by using rabbits and chickens.

“The other expensive ones are raptors. They need quail or rats, something similar to their usual food. A quail is $1. A big bird can eat two quail a day and if they are sick, you have the medical costs on top of that.”

Over the years, the Holdens have largely bankrolled the sanctuary’s annual costs of at least $2,000. The $7,000 they needed for a new one-acre cougar enclosure they raised through a mailing to sponsors and donations from interested businesses.

Like other Idaho “rehabers,” the Holdens have had to learn animal care by word of mouth. Linda raised dogs for years and has picked up more from visiting veterinarians, who offer their time and skills.

But for just $4,000, she says the International Rehabilitation Council would send an expert to Idaho to train 40 rehabers and even Idaho Department of Fish and Game officers.

“It would give everyone a good network and at least a baseline of knowledge to work with,” she says.

Despite the time and money, however, the Holdens have no intention of abandoning the sanctuary.

“Both of us feel very strongly we need to give something back to the earth,” Linda says. “We all have a wonderful standard of living. But we all take a lot, and we all take a lot for granted.”