Article by Todd Malmsbury
Wildlife – October 2004 – Colorado Central Magazine
SITTING AMID the pine-paneled walls of her two-story log home near Del Norte, longtime wildlife rehabilitator Susan Dieterich is sipping iced tea with visitors and recalling the life she and her late husband built together for nearly three decades.
Her husband, Herman Dieterich, a skilled veterinary surgeon, died unexpectedly in April 2003, and Dieterich is tying up the sale of the couple’s beloved ranch and non-profit Frisco Creek Wildlife Hospital and Rehabilitation Center. Earlier this year, the Colorado Legislature approved a measure allowing the Colorado Division of Wildlife to acquire the couple’s facility.
Susan is now ready to move on to new adventures, confident the work she and her husband started will continue under the guidance of state wildlife biologists and officers.
“This wasn’t planned. It wasn’t some grand scheme,” Susan Dieterich says of the facility she and her husband established in 1989 on 243 acres south of Del Norte.
Frisco Creek was supposed to be their dream retirement home, but it turned out to be much more than that. On this placid retreat surrounded by hills speckled with juniper, sagebrush and pinon trees, they found a new home, new friends, and a new calling. State wildlife officials say the couple created a lasting legacy that will continue to ensure better care for injured and orphaned bears, mountain lions, moose, eagles and other species.
In September, the DOW honored the Dieterichs’ contributions to the rehabilitation of Colorado wildlife and also celebrated the upcoming conversion of the family’s ranch into a permanent, state-run wildlife rehabilitation facility. The state wildlife agency also recognized the role the couple played in establishing Colorado’s Canada lynx reintroduction program. The Dieterichs are credited with carefully preparing dozens of the tuft-eared, snow-faring cats for release into the wild at a time when little was known about the elusive species.
[Susan and Herman Dieterich]
Since 1999, the DOW has released 166 Canada lynx into the wild, all of them pre-conditioned for survival at the Dieterich ranch. The agency will continue to use the facility to care for lynx, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, and biologists will build on the Dieterichs’ work by using the well-established clinic to treat other species, too.
“We couldn’t have done it without them. That’s for sure,” says Chuck Wagner, a terrestrial biologist in southwestern Colorado. “They really enjoyed working with the animals and they considered DOW folks their second family.”
While the couple’s work with Canada lynx has drawn a lot of attention, it’s their dedication to saving individual animals over the years that has inspired wildlife biologists and officers, including DOW Southwest Regional Manager Tom Spezze.
SPEZZE MET THE Dieterichs in 1989, when he was a district wildlife manager in Gunnison. He recalls taking two orphaned mountain lion cubs to Frisco Creek. Herman had already built a national reputation for treating injured wildlife, zoo animals, and prized domestic livestock. Susan, a former nurse, had become a skilled veterinary technician and had delved into the intricacies of animal autopsies, or necropsies, and animal nutrition and behavior.
“Wildlife rehabilitation is a science unto its own. The specialized care and treatment of injured or orphaned wildlife that Susan and Herman gifted to the public over the past 15 years created an opportunity for us to move forward by leaps and bounds,” Spezze says.
“Prior to this time, we would do the best we could to rehab and release injured bears, lions, eagles, elk calves, and other animals. If it survived the first two days, we would take it back to the wild where only nature knew what to do with it next. Otherwise, we would bury it the next time we went out of town,” Spezze says. “The Dieterichs gave our field personnel the tools to look the public and the animal in the eye and tell them with confidence, ‘It’s going to be all right.'”
Despite such accolades, Dieterich is clear about why she and her husband moved to the western edge of the San Luis Valley. The couple had hunted, fished, skied and hiked in the area for years, and had come to love the region.
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In the home Susan shared with her husband, a black cat peers over a wooden attic ladder propped in a loft lined with books, big-game head mounts, wildlife photos, and plaques. Outside, a late-summer wind rustles through aspen leaves and ponies flick flies with their tails in a nearby stable.
In holding pens, three mountain lions rest and recover for their return to the wild. They are among more than two dozen pumas the Dieterichs have treated at their ranch over the years. Early that morning, a black bear had cut across the deck in search of choke cherries and other forage, and Dieterich had recalled how she once cared for as many as 38 bruins, shoveling scat around the clock despite her exhaustion.
“Herman and I lived together. We worked together and we played together. We did everything together,” Dieterich says. “We’ve always just been open to a challenge. Both of us have always tackled life like that. It’s not worth it unless it’s hard.”
[Susan Dieterich]
HAVING SAID GOODBYE to a successful Dallas-area veterinary surgical clinic, they built their retirement home out of sleek logs of Douglas fir in 1987, and began a new life filled with long Jeep and horseback explorations with their children and grandchildren.
But the Dieterichs’ reputation for treating difficult animal rehabilitation cases had preceded them, and it wasn’t long before people began trekking to their new home with injured or orphaned big-game species in tow. They received state and federal licenses to treat injured wildlife in 1989 and 1990.
Before long, bears with punctured lungs, foxes with broken jaws, orphaned moose calves, and injured raptors made their way to the Dieterichs. DOW terrestrial biologist Chuck Wagner says Herman “patched up some pretty torn up wildlife,” and Susan delivered in-depth analyses about the health and welfare of every animal they treated.
“He was very unpretentious. You would never guess he was one of the best veterinary orthopedic surgeons in the country or the world,” Wagner says. “Herman and Susan made quite a team.”
The state wildlife biologist also recalls how Susan Dieterich spent hours walking through the woods with an orphaned moose calf, watching its every move. She took note of what the calf ate and knew what to feed the next one that came into the couple’s facility.
“She just has a real inquisitive mind and did a lot of research on how to care for animals. She talked to all the experts she could get a hold of, but she’s just so sharp herself that she figured things out on her own,” Wagner says.
IN 1998, the DOW asked the Dieterichs if they would help biologists condition Canada lynx for release into the San Juan Mountains. The Dieterichs put the lynx in roomy, chain-linked pens that had cool dens attached to them so the cats could hide from human activity. While the medium-sized cats got used to Colorado’s climate and altitude in the safety of holding pens at Frisco Creek, populations of snowshoe hare, a mainstay of the lynx diet, and other prey would peak during the spring, giving the lynx plenty to eat following their release.
“This was like a pioneer project,” Dieterich says. “We were searching for experts to share information on how to raise lynx.”
As it turned out, the Dieterichs were expert enough when it came to lynx. David Kenvin, a retired Division of Wildlife manager and terrestrial biologist, worked closely with the couple during the early days of the lynx reintroduction. “They had taken care of mountain lions, bobcats — anything that came in there,” he says. “They were just a natural fit for lynx when they came in, and they were so dedicated.”
Through the course of her work, Dieterich has become a passionate wildlife observer and has treated and returned many species to the wild without lasting human influences. She’s learned bears can heal from broken bones during hibernation, and that bottle-raised mountain lions can learn to hunt on their own. She believes wildlife survival odds increase greatly when humans learn more about the habits of bears, mountain lions and other species and respect their ways.
“I have this undying, optimistic view that we can all work together for the benefit of wildlife,” she says. “It’s never wasted time to learn more about a species’ behavior or an individual animal’s behavior. It tells you about the heart of that species and you learn how to manage it.”
DIETERICH’S DETERMINATION is well-known in the Valley. She once survived a snowstorm in the 1980s that left several hunters stranded, and hushed a top government official whom she thought was talking too loudly around lynx holding pens. At the start of the lynx project, Dieterich was told only that the cats could kill prey by jumping on their necks. Undaunted, the coverall-clad Dieterich corralled the animals into dens with the only tool she’s ever wielded while shepherding wildlife: a household broom.
“We found out that a lynx is a very mellow animal,” Dieterich says.”Bobcats are wired, whereas the lynx will turn around and look at you as if to say, ‘What’s up?’ It’s kind of like a bobcat on Valium.”
Herman Dieterich’s sudden death has left his beloved “Queenie” searching for a solo adventure. She says she recently renewed her passport and, “That should tell you something.”
Though she’s leaving the San Luis Valley for now, she will always be grateful that her husband died while doing what he loved best. The day he collapsed, Herman was helping a wildlife technician with spring maintenance on empty lynx pens. From her nursing experience, Dieterich knows her husband went fast.
“I guess we’d all like to go that way – doing the thing you love,” she says.
Todd Malmsbury handles public relations for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.