GOOD NEWS BEARS

At William’s new drive-through wildlife park, bears always have the right-of-way.

She seems to be lost in thought. At the end of the trail, she walks beside a chain-link fence, pacing back and forth steadily, deliberately, almost mechanically. Her heavy steps flatten the dead grass and break the twigs beneath her, turning her wilderness path into a smooth plane. Her strides aren’t very long, but what do you expect? At 12 years old, the black bear is already middle aged, her four short legs weighed down by her 150-pound (and counting) body, which is preparing for winter hibernation in captivity.
   
Cher can run up to 35 miles per hour and climb trees 100 feet tall, but that hasn’t stopped more than 60,000 people over the past five months from entering the 14-acre enclosure where she roams freely. After all, the excitement of encountering a potentially dangerous animal from the safety of your own vehicle is the draw of Bearizona, a new drive-thru wildlife park in Williams, about three hours northwest of Phoenix.
   
The 158-acre park sprang on to the Arizona tourism scene May 22, after only seven months of construction – three of which were spent 12 feet under snow.
   
Since the park opened, more than 15,000 cars have passed through the tollbooth entrance, where visitors listen to a speech on park safety before they’re released to drive through eight animal enclosures. Only six were occupied at press time.
   
A dirt road carves through the entire park in sloppy cursive ‘S’, the path twisting and looping to provide drivers a 360-degree view of North American wildlife herds in their artificially natural habitats. The enclosures are stacked like dominos, divided only by chain-link fencing and barred flooring near the gate exits to repel animal paws. Food carts stay near the road, enticing animals to gather where drivers can see them.

Thirty staff members run Bearizona during the off-peak season; 40 during the summer and holiday seasons. The builders haven’t done much to the land – the area looks like any other dry northern Arizona landscape, with patches of dead grass, rocky terrain and skyscraper pine trees. But the deliberate path and the chain-link fences leave a distinct amusement park footprint on the enclosures.
   
“People always say the park reminds them of Disney. Like the Animal Kingdom in Florida,” says Sean Casey, the park’s founder and CEO. “It’s nice to be compared to that when we have nowhere near the staff Disney has.”
   
The architects’ shining triumph is the park’s cartoonish entrance, a sprawling arch made of Sedona-red stucco rocks sloppily arranged in Flinstonian style. A black bear clings to the top of the arch, threatening to stumble off, and the “O” of “BEARIZONA” becomes a pawprint.
   
The arch sets the tone for the entire park – straight down to the Park Ranger Smith uniforms worn by the staff. Who could enter the park and not feel a sense of adventure? What fan of Steven Spielberg wouldn’t describe Bearizona as a “Jurassic Park” for bears?
   
The park cost $15 million, funded mostly through loans from Casey’s friends, family and colleagues. Casey, 45, is a recent transplant from South Dakota, where his father ran the only other drive-through bear park in the country, Bear Country USA. The success of his father’s park gave Casey – and his investors – the confidence to build the park in a harsh economic climate. 
   
Traditional zoos welcome parks like Bearizona into the fold. The drive-through model has been around for years, most notably at Florida’s popular Lion Country Safari, which opened in 1967.
   
“The main concerns we always have are for the safety of the visitors and the care and welfare of the animals,” says Steve Feldman, spokesman for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. (Bearizona is not a member of the organization.) “Those imperatives can be accomplished in a variety of formats, including drive-through zoos. If a nontraditional approach brings more people out to learn and interact with animals, we encourage it.” 
   
All of the park’s animals are captive-born and hand-raised; most came to Bearizona from the Midwest, though a handful was relocated from zoos all over the country. Busa, a yearling bear with a peculiar attachment to a green Fisher Price teeter-totter, came to northern Arizona from a Florida zoo.
   
Though the park’s black bears steal the show, there’s only one bear enclosure. The remaining five are filled with American burro, American bison, Dall sheep, white bison and Rocky Mountain big horn sheep.
   
The burros – Bearizona’s most car-friendly animals – occupy the park’s first enclosure. The donkeys aren’t afraid to cross the path of drivers, who are instructed to move along slowly on the road at all times. Those instructions don’t always stick with drivers, who just want to snap a photo of donkeys circling their car.
   
One burro came so close to 13-year-old Morgan Abeyta’s backseat window that she let out a piercing scream, scaring the donkey away.
   
“I was really scared when he got so close to me, but it was also so much fun,” she says, slapping her hands to her cheeks and mimicking delighted horror.
   
Abeyta is right: It is fun driving alongside a herd of bison, whose male members are particularly protective during mating season, or a group of big horn sheep, whose burly, curly horns can puncture metal. A sense of danger fills the car while driving beside wild animals, and Bearizona employees don’t attempt to curb the sensation.
   
Before cars are allowed to enter the park’s final enclosure, they meet Bearizona’s head of security, Bob Hurlbut, a tall man with soft eyes and the no-nonsense demeanor of an elementary school playground monitor. A short queue develops at the gateway to the bears as Hurlbut leans into each driver’s window to reiterate the park rules on driving around animals.
   
“If a bear comes toward you, prepare to move. The bears are not shy of cars. They approach vehicles all the time. Their idea of curiosity is to go ‘Plunk,’” he warns, imitating a bear plopping onto the hood of a car. “You have the kind of car-door handle bears can open. Lock ‘em up.”
   
Those scare tactics aren’t really necessary, says Casey, who has been working with bears since he was 6 years old.
   
“The black bears aren’t as dangerous as they sound. We just take extra precautions to make sure everyone stays safe. Plus, it makes the ride a bit more fun and edgy,” he says, gesturing to the wide-eyed black bear cubs in Fort Bearizona, the walking center at the end of the drive where visitors can observe wolf pups, foxes, javelina and the cubs in a more traditional zoo setting.
   
Bearizona is currently about 40 percent finished, Casey says. When the park is complete, 19 species of North American mammals will call Bearizona home.
“I always joke that it will take decades to be done,” Casey says. “But we’ll probably have everything done in four years.”

Casey expects the park, an hour south of the Grand Canyon, will bring in more international visitors over time. For now, most of the visitors are from neighboring states, the Valley and Bearizona’s own backyard.

Pam Nyhart, a Flagstaff resident and season-pass holder, was visiting Bearizona for the second time that week. A few days earlier, a storm had blown through Williams while Nyhart was with her two daughters in the bear enclosure. Cher, the pacing bear who normally keeps her distance from cars, approached Nyhart’s blue Chevrolet and licked its wet bumper.

“It’s just so exciting, seeing animals like that,” she says. “They’re as curious about us as we are about them.”

Bearizona is open Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $11 for adults, $10 for seniors and $5 for children ages 4 to 12. Kids under 3 are free.