Michigan Farmer Rescued Injured Animals Without the Proper Permits. State Officials Have Charged Her With a Misdemeanor and Euthanized the Animals.

For years, Julie Hall has been running a small animal rescue operation without incident on her farm in the northern Michigan town of Petoskey. That ended in late January when state wildlife officials showed up at her door in response to a complaint that she was taking in animals without the proper permits. Hall has since been charged with a misdemeanor, and six of her animals, including a blind raccoon and a one-legged crow, were confiscated and euthanized by the state. "I truly did not know I was breaking the law because I had done this all my life, as a farmer, I'd done this," says Hall. "Had I known I was such a criminal, I would have never done it. I'm not built that way." The state's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) says that licensing requirements exist to prevent rescued wild animals from becoming a danger to the community and that it had no choice but to put down the animals collected from Hall's farm.Hall has been taking in animals at her family's KeiJu Farm for decades. She candidly admits that she didn't have the required state permission to be a Michigan Licensed Rehabilitator. Everyone from farmers and friends to members of the community would bring her all sorts of creatures in need of help, she says, from animals injured by hunters to orphaned baby raccoons. Hall, assisted by a crew of volunteers, would do what she could to nurse the animals brought to her back to health so that they could be released back into the wild. Animals that came to her as babies were taught to fish, hunt, and fend for themselves before being let go, she says. Those animals with more serious disabilities—or which failed to pass tests showing they would be able to survive in the wild—she kept around permanently alongside her domesticated goats, chickens, and alpacas...MORE