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Home > Winter Wildlife at the Maine Wildlife Park

Winter Wildlife at the Maine Wildlife Park

Maine Wildlife Park Announces Best Season to Date in 2007

The Maine Wildlife Park in Gray, owned and operated by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, saw its best season ever in 2007 with over 108,000 visits and close to $590,000 in total revenue.

This represents a 12.9% increase in visitation and a 31.3% increase in total revenue over 2006. Certainly good weather played a large part in our successful season, but the park’s special events, advertising and PR work, wildlife and conservation education programming for school children, and our growing popularity with both Maine residents and out- of-state tourists all contributed to the successful season. Visitors from Germany, England, Bulgaria, Australia, Hungary and Japan were recorded, as well as from several Canadian provinces and dozens of US cities and states.

Special events offered each Saturday and throughout the summer generated high numbers of visitors. Some of those most noteworthy included the 3rd annual Native American ‘Honor the Animals’ Pow Wow, which drew close to 4000 visitors over 2 days; the annual Fish and Wildlife Open House with free admission, bringing close to 2000 visitors in a single day; and our very popular Halloween Night Hike, with almost 900 people coming in costume for a 3 hour night-time park visit with special Halloween exhibits, displays, contests and prizes.

The Park Nature Store doubled its net revenue between 2006 and 2007, offering a variety of wildlife and nature themed merchandise that is both appealing and affordable to our visitors.

Winter at the Maine Wildlife Park

Our wildlife is currently ‘tucked in’ for the winter, with the hawks, owls, and eagles housed indoors in spacious barns; the bears sleeping for the winter in their dens as they would in the wild; the moose and deer creating their own ‘yards’ in their spacious, several acre enclosures; and the furbearers ‘snugged up’ in dens of thick pine boughs and straw.

We look forward to a busy 2008 as we prepare our next season event calendars, finish up exhibits currently under construction, and plan for new exhibits and activities for our visitors to see and do next year.

Winter Wildlife Slideshow
photo by: Deb Plengey

For those who cannot see the photos, they can be viewed here.