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The Great Bear Wilderness Experience
When you step onto the winding path leading through Great Bear Wilderness, you begin a journey of discovery. Along the way, you’ll encounter culturally significant North American species and learn about their past, their present status, and threats to their survival.
Highlights of the Experience Include:
Viewing areas that allow you to go eye-to-eye with bison, grizzly bears, and polar bears. You can look up to a herd of bison from a tunnel underneath their prairie habitat, or peer through the glass in underwater viewing to watch the aquatic moves of polar bears and grizzly bears diving beneath the surface.
Murals, artwork, photos, and interpretive signage delving into the mythic past and present challenges of each species.
Multi-media encounters, including listening to an audio recording of a bison stampede and viewing footage of species’ natural habitats.
A collection of poems artfully displayed throughout the exhibit, enhancing animal encounters and inspiring a deeper connection with nature.
The Great Bear Wilderness Landscape
The exhibit recreates the North American wilderness, featuring hilly terrain, prairie expanses, rockwork, pools, a waterfall, and fallen trees. The exhibit is landscaped with nearly 31,500 new plantings, including trees, shrubs, prairie grasses, shrubs, perennials, and groundcover.
The bison habitat includes a 1.5-acre grassy landscaped expanse stretching over a 1.5 acres of grassy roaming space that is also landscaped over a 25-foot-wide by 60-foot-long interpretive tunnel. Two sand wallows within the habitat provide the herd with behavioral enrichment.
The bear underwater viewing area provides an immersive experience with two five-inch-thick acrylic windows, each measuring 21 feet wide.
The 1,200 square-foot bald eagle and raven habitat reaches 24 feet high, bounded by a virtually invisible mesh barrier. The space features a 24-foot-high gunite perching tree and a nesting platform.
Originally a stand-alone exhibit, the 2.1-acre Regenstein Wolf Woods is now a part of Great Bear Wilderness, seamlessly connecting the bald eagle and raven habitat with that of the polar bears and grizzly bears.
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