Wildlife Festival

Join us for our free, family-friendly 28th Annual Wildlife Festival on September 30th from 10 am to 2 pm at the Oak Savanna Learning Center! Help us to celebrate National Wildlife Refuge Week (October 8 – 14, 2023), Urban National Wildlife Refuge Day (October 7, 2023), National Public Lands Day (September 23, 2023) and all the wildlife at Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. 

The festival will include many booths set along the packed granite trails at the Oak Savanna Learning Center. Make sure to check out the engaging, hands-on activities at each booth; meet Puddles the Blue Goose, learn about refuge wildlife and management, try your hand at a BB gun, experience native seed cleaning, learn about Native American culture, observe live animals, investigate aquatic invertebrates and more! Two local food trucks will be on-site to serve a variety of food at a reasonable cost. A silent auction and the Eagle’s Nest Nature Store will be available for perusing inside the Oak Savanna Learning Center. 

Several refuge service roads will be open to vehicle traffic during the event to provide visitors a rare opportunity to see areas of the refuge that are not typically open to vehicles. Maps showing the open refuge roads will be available on the homepage of this website and at Refuge Headquarters closer to the event date. 

The Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge Photography Club will be displaying all entries to the 2023 Youth Photography Contest at this event. Entries must be submitted by September 1, 2023.