Entrance to the BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops (File Photo)
BC Wildlife Park Recap

BC Wildlife Park coming off third-best year on record for attendance levels

Feb 6, 2025 | 7:01 AM

KAMLOOPS — The BC Wildlife Park in Kamloops is reporting another successful year of operations as it welcomed 117,727 people during its most recent fiscal year, which ended on Jan. 31.

“This will be the third best annual attendance that we’ve had,” General Manager Glenn Grant told CFJC Today. “We did reach 119,800 people back in 2019 and we reached 118,170 back in 2022.”

The Wildlife Park was coming off a tough 2023, where attendance levels were down in part because of a bad summer fire season, the worst on record in British Columbia.

While 2024 was the fourth-worst fire season on record in B.C., most of the land burned last summer was in the Prince George Fire Centre. In the Kamloops area, the biggest impacts were caused by the Shetland Creek blaze near Spences Bridge.

“It’s been an excellent year in 2024 with not much smoke or wildfires, so that helped,” Grant said. “We went back to historical numbers through July and August. Our budget for visitors was 111,600. In 2023, we had about 109,000 people come to the park but that was a smoky summer.”

Grant says the Wildlife Park was able to bring in a little over $3 million in revenue as 2024 was also the second-best ever year for Wildlights. While its possible that is a record total for revenue in a fiscal year, Grant said park officials are still working to finalize their books.

“Very rarely have we gone over $3 million in revenue,” Grant said. “I can’t actually remember a time that we’ve been over $3 million. We’ve been $2.8 million, $2.7 million, but being over $3 million is pretty darn good.”

He said that revenue will also help cover some of the increased costs for things like utilities, maintenance, wages, and feed costs.

“We’ve got an awful lot to buy for our animals however we’ve also been very lucky in that we have distressed produce that is donated to the park and people who drop off meat from their freezer when they’re restocking,” Grant said. “We go up about five or six per cent a year in feed costs, and that is only because we get the support from the community through donations or else it would be even higher.

“The revenue is very, very welcome in keeping the park operating and keeping all of the animals happy and healthy and secure for a ways to come.”

The BC Wildlife Park is currently only open on weekends and on School District 73 Pro D days. It will return to daily operations on March 1.