We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Warren Short. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Warren below.

Warren, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

Human expansion is steadily destroying animal habitat, causing more and more animals to be displaced, injured, and orphaned. We provide compassionate, healing, care to these animals, saving lives and relocating them to suitable habitat, so they can have a second chance at life. As a former hunter, and outdoor enthusiast, it is important that we identify, improve and preserve habitat for our wildlife, but it is equally important that we provide support to those impacted by human expansion.

Warren, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Warren Short, my business is called Short’s Fawn Rescue. We specialize in rescuing injured, orphaned, and abandoned Whitetail Fawns. I grew up hunting and fishing in Michigan. As a young man, I spent a lot of time in the woods, observing nature and learning about wildlife. As an adult, I worked for the automotive industry and saw how big business works. I taught my children to hunt and fish, but most importantly to value the importance of wildlife and preservation of habitat.
I started rehabbing animals as a young man, helping turtles cross the road, raising orphaned babies, etc., not really knowing that that was what I was doing. My start with fawns came in my 40s when I rescued a newborn fawn from two red foxes who were trying to kill it. After chasing the fox away, I hid in the bushes waiting for mom to return (for hours), but she never did. As darkness fell, the foxes returned and I again chased them away, but at that point, I knew the fawn was doomed, so I scooped him up and took him home, raised him, and released him (not knowing that that was illegal). Years later, my son found a fawn in our yard that was badly dehydrated and lethargic. We provided water, moved him to the shade, and started looking for a licensed rehabber to help. It was then that I discovered there are only a handful of fawn rehabbers in Michigan. I knew I had to help.

As rehabbers, our services include Public education and coaching, disease control and reporting, rescue, and rehabilitation of injured, orphaned, and abandoned fawns, as well as generating awareness of the effects of human expansion on our wildlife and natural resources.

We field calls from hundreds of people each year who find a fawn and don’t know if it needs help, or not. We ask questions to assess the situation and typically instruct people to leave the fawn alone and wait to see if mom returns. If after a reasonable amount of time, she does not, then we provide help with the animal. If the interview leads us to believe the fawn has been injured, orphaned, or abandoned then we instruct them how to help.

I am proud of the service we provide and of how the public has accepted and supported our efforts. We are also proud and grateful, for our increasing success in our ability to accurately assess a fawn’s need for rescue, so they are not accidentally kidnapped from their mother. And, how much we learn each year from our work and our collaboration with other rehabbers. This helps us save more fawns and increase awareness of what we do and how we are perceived by the public. Also, that we are asked by elementary schools as well as adult education groups to spread awareness and better educate the public.

Few people know that there is no monetary support for what we do. Most people seem to think we are employees of the state and get paid to do this, nothing could be further from the truth! We are licensed by the state and have to operate within state guidelines, but we get no support from them. To help cover the cost of infrastructure, feed, medical treatment, supplies, etc. we have started a 501 C(3) non-profit company to enable us to accept donations. Without donations from caring, supportive people and businesses, we could not do what we do.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

When we got started, we were sub-permitted under a licensed rehabber, who helped us learn the rules and provided coaching, etc. Our intake the first year was four fawns. The second year, we weren’t even sure if we would continue, but the calls came in and we took in five fawns. Our success (and failures) taught us that we had a lot to learn and that this was not a cheap profession to get into. But, we also saw how great the need was and made the decision to go ahead and get licensed. Before our third year even started, the DNR told us we needed a bigger pen and that we should expect a lot more fawns when we go public. We had no idea!

The third year started on May 19th and escalated rapidly! Our name and location was posted on the DNR website and the calls came rolling in… 20, 30, 40 per day! We grew from an intake of only five in the second year to forty seven the third year! We had hundreds of calls, long hours treating critical patients, bottle feeding babies, and desperately fund-raising to support the cause. There were times when we lost fawns and cried, there were times when we were so frustrated we felt like quitting, but we knew we had to continue. As the season rolled on it slowly got easier, and eventually slowed a bit.

At the end of the season, the reward came as we started releasing the fawns we saved and enjoyed watching them thrive in their new habitat. That renews our faith and keeps us going.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

One of the things that I experienced as a person looking for a rehabber was that because there are so few, most of them don’t answer the phone. They have a message instructing people what to do, So, I decided that a higher level of customer service was needed.

First, I decided that I would answer the phone as much as possible, or at least return their call ASAP. I was getting calls from all over the state and even from other states, with a wide variety of situations, many of which were not covered by most rehabbers’ messages. It was critical to be able to quickly provide more support than just a message.

Second, I created a map, showing where all the fawn rehabbers were located within our state, so I would be able to refer callers to rehabbers close to them, not just tell them what to do. This is better for the animal, as traveling long distances is very stressful for them and can even cause death. Also, timing is important with very young and injured animals.

Third, most callers are very concerned about the animal they found, they don’t need a message, they need someone to talk to them, educate them about the animal and ease their stress, so they feel better about the course of action they need to take.

Providing a level of customer service resulted in people telling others that my rescue was a highly recommended and resulted in increased support.

Contact Info:

• Website: To locate the DNR Wildlife Rehabilitator list, go to: https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/dlr/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shortsrescue2021
• Other: Ways to donate: Cash.App/$ShortsFawnRescue Venmo/Warren Short@Shorts-Fawn-Rescue Zelle: [email protected] PayPal.me/ShortsFawnRescue GoFund.me/30863fb8 If you would rather purchase items for the fawns, please go to our Amazon Wish List: https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1W4WWIWJY365P…

Image Credits
All photos personal property.