Duluth, MN Animal Ordinances: Wildlife Rescue Permits (2026)

Duluth Legislative Code Chapter 6, Article VII bars anyone in the City of Duluth from owning, possessing or exhibiting a nondomesticated animal, keeping one as a pet, or offering one for sale, under Section 6-73. Section 6-74 then lists the only exceptions: traveling circuses and zoological shows in compliance with the Unified Development Chapter (Chapter 50), permanent zoological exhibits, bona fide veterinary hospitals acting within their business, and, at subsection (d), wildlife rehabilitators. That fourth exception covers persons keeping nondomesticated animals as part of a bona fide institutional program whose purpose is returning the animals to the wild; the ordinance sets no separate application, fee or inspection step for that category, it simply lifts the Section 6-73 prohibition provided the rehabilitator's premises comply with every zoning requirement in Chapter 50.

Anyone claiming the exemption without operating a genuine institutional return-to-the-wild program, or without zoning compliance, keeps the animal in violation of Section 6-73 and remains subject to impoundment under Section 6-75, which folds nondomesticated-animal impoundment into the general impoundment procedure at Section 6-3. Duluth's code separately licenses a nuisance wildlife removal business under Sections 6-82 and 6-83, a commercial category (annual license, $3,000 bond, inspection by the animal control authority) aimed at removing nuisance wildlife from property, not at housing injured or orphaned wild animals for release; a rehabilitator relying on the Section 6-74(d) exemption is not automatically covered by, or required to hold, that separate license.