Wild Times at Wildwood Zoo: April Edition

Thursday, April 16th, 2026 -- 11:01 AM

It’s time for the April edition of Wild Times at Wildwood Zoo.

Kyle Kirk, Wildwood Zoo Manager, discusses some events that have happened from the past month and what’s coming up down the line.

Listen to the interview with Kyle here!

Again, if you’d like to learn more about what’s happening at Wildwood Zoo, you can visit their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/wildwoodzoo) or the City of Marshfield’s website. (https://cityofmarshfieldwi.gov/visitors/wildwood_park_and_zoo/index.php)

(AI assisted transcription via Otter.ai)

Riley: "The last time we spoke, in March, one of the things that you had coming up was the "Be the Bunny" event at the Wildwood Zoo. How did that go?"

Kyle: "Really good! There's probably, oh, there was definitely over 100 people here. We had that last Saturday. All the animals had a lot of fun exploring their new enrichment. And, you know, having fun with all the human smells. And, yeah, it was a really great time."

Riley: "And was there anything else, anything else that you had come up within the past month that you got to do?"

Kyle: "Well, just surviving all the crazy storms again and just kind of coming into our spring season. Just a little bit further, we're working on a couple different habitat restorations, trying to give some new avenues of locomotion around their exhibits."

"Some new exciting things planned for the next couple of weeks, we're planning on hatching out some new zoo occupants. That's as much as I can tell you. There will be some new faces and new species coming into spring that I'm really excited about."

Riley: "And do you have, like, any other kind of events coming up here that you'd like to highlight?"

Kyle: "I know we're having our Earth Day celebration on the actual day, and we're going to have, we have some paper mache giant globes that we're going to give some animals and there's going to be some groups coming down and being they're going to pick up some litter in the park."

"So, we'll be throwing off a little event with that. We are trying to investigate a new thing called a Bio Blitz. It's an app. It's something that will greater connect our community and be able to have regular visitors document the bio diversity of the park. It's something that my staff is very excited about. I don't much know much more than that, but it seems really fun."

Riley: " And now, last time we spoke too we talked about the hours. Your hours have changed a little bit here, as we are in the spring hours now and then you've got the summer hours coming up. Can you kind of remind people what those hours are?"

Kyle: "Again, our spring hours are 7am-6pm and our summer hours are 7am-7pm and that's every day throughout the week. We are a free zoo, but a donation is recommended. But we are a real fun time for a small family outing from anywhere in central Wisconsin."

"It's a great place to learn and experience a little bit of nature and we have a lot of really new, fun things planned, so I'm really excited to have people come down. And the crowds have been really good coming into the season, so we're really hopeful."

Riley: "Now, if people are curious, they'd like to learn more or maybe learn more about some of the events and stuff that you have coming up, where's a good place for them to go to do that?"

Kyle: "A great place to keep up to date with everything zoo is our Facebook page and you can find it at Wildwood Zoo through Marshfield on Facebook and if you ever need to contact anyone in the zoo staff or like to be pointed in the right direction, the Parks and Rec number for the city of Marshfield is great. You can find that on the website."

"You know, we're always here to answer questions. Our tour season is coming up soon. We have a lots of schools that come and do our enrichment tours and our just guided tours. And a new thing this year that we're really excited about is a self guided option. You know, with a really small amount of staff at Wildwood, we struggle to book all the tours, so there's a self guided tour option."

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.