ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – Jody Young sees a fledging wildlife rescue center growing on the grounds of Graham Creek Nature Preserve.

With the help of an all-day music festival fundraiser in Orange Beach, she now knows it will soon take flight.

“It just needs to be able to fly and it’s going to fly now,” Young says.

On Aug. 11 at the Happy Harbor on the Alabama-Florida line the Ol’ River Folk and Blues Festival will take flight as well. The show will include 14 bands playing from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., lots of vendors and raffles and silent auctions with the proceeds going to the Coastal Wildlife Rescue Center.

“It’s located on the Graham Creek Nature Preserve, 500 acres of the most pristine property with three springs,” Young said. “It is the headwaters of Graham Creek. Every ecosystem you can imagine.”

Young has been involved with animal rescues for the past 38 years and recently that included a gopher turtle released at the preserve.

“I actually went out there a month and a half ago and released a gopher turtle that was probably 120 to 150 years old,” she said. “It had got hit on Highway 59. I picked her up, took her to the vet and got some antibiotics shot in her. She lived in my utility room for a month and a half. We bondoed her shell and I released her at the wildlife center.”

Veterinarian David Dykes has been helping Young with rescued animals during the years. Most of the rescue work took place on her five-acres of land near Foley.

“It’s just gotten to the point where it can’t be a backyard operation,” she said.

Donations and help have already been offered and Young hopes money raised at the festival will help operations to continue to expand.

“We’ve had a $10,000 portable building donated,” she said. “We’ve got about 165 feet of fence up, we’ve got an eight-by-eight flight cage that’s got to get built. The last things that we have to get done just to get the center open. Everything else is in place.”

Young says the rescue effort will fill a need for Baldwin County.

“It is for our wildlife to remain in Baldwin County because we don’t have a rescue center,” she said. “This thing is going to grow to where it’s an educational wildlife center. We want to keep all our wildlife in Baldwin County.

“Everything is raised for release. Nothing is kept for a pet.”

Lately she’s been running all over the place retrieving and soliciting items for the auction and raffles.

“We’ve got a $1,500 reef from the Reefmaker that we’re raffling off,” she said. “We’ve got a $450 inshore fishing trip. The Artist Gallery gave us these healing crosses that are made out of glass and they are gorgeous.”

“I’ve got two original Carol Kopf prints, they were actually my wolves that she did in water colors. She is world-renowned. I had her privately do that from a photograph of two wolves. She had three prints she made from that, signed prints and those are being matted and they’ll be in the silent auction.”

Scheduled to participate in the Aug. 11 festival are art vendors, widlife artists, wood carvers, bee keepers, goat’s milk soap vendor, LED Light Hula Hoops, hair wraps, cotton candy, snow cones, candles,

haircuts, Bonsai trees and a live painter.

Providing the music will be Guthrie Trapp, Shawna P and the Earth Funk Trio, Tony T-bone Montgomery, Maxwell Russell, Drew Landry, Opossum, Jed Sparks, Paul Farrar, Riley Yielding, Sam Morgan, Sassasafrass, Rags Magnolia Belly Dance, Fritzi Presley and the Mississsippiana, Billy Marter, Mark Sherrill, Cody Roth, Damien Lamb and John Fowler.

Anyone wishing to donate items for the silent auction or sees an animal in distress can call young at 251-943-4678.