Sleeping Bear Wildlife Fund

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Beulah, MI
Sleeping Bear Wildlife Fund

Your resource for wildlife rehabilitation, restoration, and environmental education in Benzie County, MI.
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If you have found an injured, sick, or orphaned wild animal, please call/text us at 231-590-8639.

09/18/2026

This year, we launched our amphibian conservation project and have since been surveying northern Michigan frogs and toads to better understand their demographics throughout the region. By tracking their mating calls, we are able to monitor population trends and detect changes in the health of our local wetlands. This project will provide a baseline assessment of these populations and allow conservation entities to make better decisions on their protection. This project will also lead to the development of a comprehensive conservation management plan for three species that are rare in northern Michigan.

We are grateful to be receiving a grant from so that we can purchase bioacoustics monitoring units! These will be placed in wetlands and will record frog calls throughout the entire season, which will allow us a better, more comprehensive data set and recording of the calls that we otherwise would not have gotten by solely using our current methodology. This will, in turn, give us greater capacity to dial in on specific locations where different state-listed species are found.

The grant amount is to be determined publicly by an online voting system, and we are asking for your help! You can look at all the other important amphibian conservation projects and vote for our acoustic amphibian monitoring project at: https://form.jotform.com/262523976941164!

We are incredibly thankful for our community and for everyone who wants to conserve the northern Michigan region alongside us! By restoring potentially limited or extirpated populations of frogs and working with land conservancies, we are hoping to restore a critical component of the ecosystem by potentially reintroducing a species back into its former range. This grant will be the start to a long term amphibian conservation project based in northern Michigan.

09/16/2026

We have the greatest supporters! Sending all our gratitude to Annette, who generously shopped much of our rehabilitation supply wish list recently. It was like Christmas - all week! We are flush with formula and Pedialyte for orphaned wildlife, bite gloves for safety, hammocks for little guys, no-spill dishes, a full setup for turtles, and several large totes! We also received a battery last week to bolster our solar panel setup. We have a lot to organize and couldn’t be happier.

If you’d like to contribute to supplies to help our work, shop our wish lists: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1DT2FRGNGQS3A/ref=hz_ls_biz_ex or https://www.walmart.com/registry/RR/888ee13f-8803-4f2f-8c3b-f42bef5180f3 and our registry with Henry’s Pets, which carries a lot of the formula we use for some species: https://xfkkeq.littleregistry.com/uj3t30.

For anyone who shops our wish list - please note that Amazon no longer sends slips to tell who it is from! We were fortunate to see a name on an item from Henry’s. Please contact us at [email protected] or 231-590-8639 if you shop the wish list and we’ll be sure to send you a proper thank you!

09/09/2026

We have been spending lots of time this past month in Northern Michigan’s forests, wetlands and grasslands looking down in the dirt for some special yet mighty beetles!

Carrion beetles are some of our local ecosystem’s most important species, but are hugely underrepresented in research. These beetles are tiny superheroes that maintain healthy environments by recycling nutrients back into the soil, by reducing the spread of disease, by improving soil fertility, and by supporting the many other organisms that rely on a nutrient-rich ecosystem. Carrion beetles also act as indicator species because their population stability is closely tied to habitat quality and natural ecological processes.

We are excited to be currently conducting the first comprehensive baseline assessment of carrion beetle communities in Northern Michigan! Documenting these species is crucial not only for protecting individual beetle populations, but also for understanding the health and resilience of Northern Michigan's ecosystems. We are also searching for the federally endangered American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus), which was once widespread throughout Michigan but has not been confirmed in the state for decades and is now considered extirpated (locally extinct). Through standardized, non-lethal trapping methods, our research will document carrion beetle diversity, evaluate habitat suitability, and determine whether remnant populations of the American burying beetle may persist.

Learn more about our research and conservation work on our website.
https://www.sleepingbearwildlife.org/carrion-beetle-research

08/25/2026

We recently spent some quality time among Northern Michigan's wildflower meadows studying one of our most important native pollinators: bumble bees!

Bumble bees are exceptional pollinators, helping native wildflowers, crops, and entire plant communities reproduce and thrive. They're also fascinating animals. Depending on the species, colonies may nest underground, in abandoned rodent burrows, or among dense grasses and vegetation. As winter approaches, the workers and males die, while newly produced queens overwinter and emerge the following spring to start colonies of their own.

One of their coolest adaptations is buzz pollination. Bumble bees can grab onto certain flowers and rapidly vibrate their flight muscles, shaking loose pollen that would otherwise remain trapped inside the flower. It's a specialized technique that honey bees can't perform, making bumble bees especially effective pollinators for plants such as blueberries, cranberries, and tomatoes.

Sleeping Bear Wildlife Fund is working in partnership with The Ohio State University to survey bumble bee diversity and abundance across our region. By establishing baseline information about which species are here and where they're found, we can better understand their populations and help inform future conservation efforts. We have some exciting plans on the horizon for bumble bee conservation in Northern Michigan. Stay tuned!

Learn more about our research and conservation work on our website. www.sleepingbearwildlife.org/bumblebees

08/19/2026

This past weekend, we celebrated the successful release of eight Virginia opossums back into the wild! The eight joeys came into our care when their mother was attacked by a dog back in May. They had a rough start and were scattered in the dirt, but a caring person picked them up and brought them to us in a pillowcase. (Almost like mom!) After round the clock feeding and thriving with one of our awesome foster volunteers, they were put into a pre-release enclosure for the past several weeks to acclimate to being outside, learn to forage and make nests, and develop the other skills they would need to thrive in the wild. Now, their time has come and they were released.

Opossums play an important role in Northern Michigan's ecosystems as native scavengers and omnivores, helping clean up carrion and contributing to healthy, functioning food webs. Watching wildlife return to where they belong is always one of the most rewarding parts of rehabilitation.
We're grateful to everyone who helped make their journey back to the wild possible. Good luck out there, little ones!

08/17/2026

Happy August! It has been a busy summer so far here in northern Michigan, and our work is far from over! We have several exciting research projects that are in the works this Fall.

This month, we are researching monarch butterflies. These animals are iconic migratory insects found across Michigan, where they rely on milkweed as the only host plant for their caterpillars and nectar-rich native flowers for fuel during migration. Monarchs face major challenges from habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and diseases such as Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (O.E.), a parasite that can weaken butterflies and reduce survival.

To support monarch conservation, Sleeping Bear Wildlife Fund is tagging monarchs to help track migration patterns and monitoring individuals for signs of disease, contributing valuable data that can inform regional conservation efforts and help protect this remarkable species. We are excited to be working with Monarch Watch, Monarch Health, Grand Traverse Regional Land Conservancy, U.S. Forest Service, and University of Georgia

If you’re interested in learning more about our ecosystem restoration projects, visit www.sleepingbearwildlife.org/monarchs

07/31/2026

Check out all those teeth! Did you know that Virginia opossums have more teeth than you? These animals actually have more teeth than any other land mammal in North America.

When they feel threatened, opossums like to show off all 50 of their teeth because it helps them scare away predators. That’s exactly what these opossums are doing here: they’re trying to scare away our rehabilitation volunteer who is coming into their enclosure to give them their dinner. We like to see the animals at our center trying to scare us away with this harmless habit because it is a good sign that these opossums haven’t been habituated to people. This means that when we release them back into the wild once they return to full health or are displaying all the right behaviors they will need on their own, they will not be dependent on human care, and will be able to thrive in a natural environment.

📷: Chrissy W, volunteer

07/20/2026

Volunteers Needed!

We are looking for additional volunteers to assist at our private location in Beulah.

Weekend and weekday shifts available, both morning and evening.

Volunteer tasks include:
Preparing diets
Distributing food in outdoor enclosures
Cleaning outdoor enclosures

No experience necessary, we will train you!

If interested, please text us at 231-590-8639 or email us at [email protected]

07/16/2026

Milkweed is blooming across Northern Michigan, and so are the monarchs! This is one of the best times of year to look closely at milkweed plants, where you may find tiny caterpillars, beautiful green chrysalises, and adult butterflies all on the same plant.

Monarchs rely exclusively on milkweed to complete their life cycle. As caterpillars, they feed on the plant and store its natural toxins, making both the caterpillars and adult butterflies unpalatable to many predators.

Each fall, a special "super generation" of monarchs begins an incredible migration of up to 3,000 miles to overwinter in the mountains of central Mexico. The following spring, it takes several generations of their descendants to make the journey back to Northern Michigan.

Unfortunately, monarch populations continue to decline due to habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and disease. One of the best ways you can help is by planting native milkweed and protecting existing patches, which also support dozens of other native insects and pollinators.

Want to learn more? Download our free monarch coloring page on our website! [www.sleepingbearwildlife.org/education-resources1]

Stay tuned as Sleeping Bear Wildlife Fund launches our monarch conservation program next month. We'll be tagging monarchs to help track their migration and monitoring butterflies for O.E., a parasite that can affect their survival, contributing valuable data to conservation efforts across North America.

07/08/2026

We had a fantastic time at the as part of their summer reading program, "Unearth a Story!"

We brought along some of our favorite underground residents and explored the hidden world beneath our feet, introducing young readers to the incredible animals that live in the soil and why they're so important to healthy ecosystems. From decomposers that recycle nutrients to insects that improve soil health, students discovered that some of nature's most important creatures are often the ones we rarely see.

Thank you to the Interlochen Public Library for inviting us to share our passion for wildlife and conservation with the next generation of nature enthusiasts!

Address

Beulah, MI
49617

Telephone

+12315908639

Website

http://sleepingbearwildlife.org/

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