Curraghs Wildlife Park occupies a corner of the Ballaugh Curraghs - an area of low wet ground in the north-west of the Isle of Man designated as a Ramsar site under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance. The park was founded in 1963 under the Curraghs Acquisition Act, an Act of Tynwald. The Isle of Man Government purchased about 200 acres, dividing them between 160 acres of nature reserve and 40 acres of wildlife park. The Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man, Sir Ronald Garvey, formally opened the 26-acre park on 23 July 1965. Today it holds about 100 species, primarily wetland animals, in walk-through enclosures. Fifteen acres of the park remain undeveloped, displaying a variety of habitats: bogs, Molinia grasslands, open water peat diggings, birch woodland, and hay meadows. Three nature trails - a standard trail, a treetop trail, and a butterfly trail - run through this area with signage describing the ecology and history of the Curragh.

In 2005, the park hosted the annual meeting of the British and Irish Association of Zoos and Aquariums (BIAZA) as part of its 40th-anniversary celebrations. Four years later, in 2009, BIAZA presented the park with its Small Collection award for "Best Education Project with schools" at a ceremony at Knowsley Hall in Merseyside. The recognition was for the park's work bringing primary-age children into direct contact with wildlife and wetland habitats. There are educational facilities on site, together with a children's farm called Close Beg, play areas, and The Orchid Line - a ridable miniature railway that loops through part of the grounds. The park is owned by the Isle of Man Government and administered by the Department of Environment, Food & Agriculture; it was formerly under the Department of Community, Culture and Leisure.

Curraghs has a long history of animals leaving without permission. The 1960s wallabies are the most famous: they have widely established themselves ferally across the island and are now part of the wildlife visitors hope to glimpse on country drives. Around 1995, red-winged laughingthrushes - a species from China and Vietnam - escaped from the aviaries and established a small breeding population, confirmed in the wild in 1996. It died out after several years. In October 2019, a red panda named Kush escaped and was missing for almost three weeks before being recovered. In January 2020, Kush escaped again, this time for about a week. There is something quietly comic about a park whose animals seem keen to explore the surrounding bog. The animals themselves get a great deal of press. The escapes have also brought public attention to questions about animal welfare and enclosure design at small island zoos.

The most painful of the park's stories belongs to Orry, a sea lion born here in 1992. In 1994 he was sold to a dealer who in turn sold him to a travelling circus in Belgium. He was eventually rescued and given to Dudley Zoo in the English Midlands, where he died in 2014. The whole affair was politically charged at the time: it led to an unsuccessful motion of no confidence in John Corrin MHK, then Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry. In April 2018 came another loss when a fire destroyed an enclosure and killed two lemurs. The living collection today includes boa constrictors, Bolivian squirrel monkeys, black spider monkeys, Chilean flamingos, emus, fishing cats, Hermann's tortoises, European eagle owls, Humboldt penguins, kookaburras, long-eared owls, northern lynxes, red pandas, ring-tailed coatis, a silvery gibbon, Oriental small-clawed otters, and red-necked wallabies. The wetland around them is the same wetland the wild wallabies use - which is, in the end, the most honest version of a zoo a small island can manage.