Maine Wildlife Park in Gray has opened for the season. Rory Sweeting/Community Reporter

Gray’s Maine Wildlife Park opened for the 2025 season on April 15, buoyed by high attendance during the school vacation week.

Maine’s spring break is one of the park’s biggest weeks of the year, with the whole team getting excited about ramping up educational programming and talking with visitors about animal care, according to park Assistant Superintendent Ben Barrett.

Maine Wildlife Park’s opossum exhibit, home to Peanut, a partially-blind opossum. Rory Sweeting/Community Reporter

The park, which was founded in 1998 on the site of a former game farm, is owned by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, but is entirely funded by tickets and money spent at the nature store. Barrett, who has been working at the park for three years, said the purpose of the park is to serve as a sanctuary for animals that are incapable of surviving in the wild. None of the animals at the park were bred or purchased, and several of the enclosures were empty because the park was waiting for animals that need a home.

“While we always want to provide the best experience for our visitors, the animals’ well-being is our top priority,” Barrett said.

A moose at Maine Wildlife Park. Rory Sweeting/Community Reporter

New animals this season include Peanut, a young opossum whose mother was struck by a vehicle when he was just a month old, causing him to lose the use of one of his eyes. While Barrett said Peanut had grown comfortable with visitors coming to his enclosure, the park takes steps to prevent animals from getting too overwhelmed by the sheer number of visitors in the first few weeks.

The park, which houses several species of wild birds, has also been taking precautions amid the bird flu outbreak, particularly in the case of its vultures, who have not yet been put on display this season due to the risk of catching the disease from their wild peers. While there is no vaccination program yet approved for captive or domestic birds, park staff have been following strict protective equipment protocols with the birds, such as feeding them in a certain order. Barrett said that the outbreak is another example of the adaptations required of the park in the past few years.

The park, which will be open throughout the summer until October, has several exciting events coming up, such as a plant sale over Memorial Day weekend, a chainsaw artist creating natural-themed artwork on May 31 that will compliment wood sculptures already on display, as well as a fall fun fest at the end of the season. In between those days, they have species-focused days where biologists visit and give talks about the animals that they study.

The new gateway building of the Maine Wildlife Park. Rory Sweeting/Community Reporter

One of the most important events planned for the 2025 season is the opening of a new building near the park’s entrance, which combines the functions of office building, park gateway and nature store.

Barrett said that the space, which will replace the old farm house that the staff had previously been working out of, will help them improve on workplace collaborations. Although Barrett could not give an opening date, he said that a ribbon-cutting event is planned.