Happy Holidays! Also thank you to Bearizona for this: Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 7:49 PM Thank you for blogging about our park. We appreciate your support. Please feel free to use the photographs on your website with a reference to our park. We do not need anything more. Hopefully you can visit us again in the future to check out our progress. We are planning on opening up a new adult bear exhibit in the walk-through area this Friday. It will feature a cave that visitors can enter to view the bears through glass. Take care, Sean Casey sean@bearizona.com http://azdailysun.com/news/local/article_189d73a6-24f3-11df-8163-001cc4c002e0.html says: Bearizona taking shape CYNDY COLE Sun Staff Reporter azdailysun.com | Posted: Monday, March 1, 2010 5:30 am A drive-through wildlife park is projected to open in Williams by mid-May, providing tourists with views of wolves, bears and bison from their vehicles and a walking area with bear cubs, javelina, raccoons and otters in enclosures. The 158-acre, $15 million park, Bearizona, is now under construction on the east side of town, in a forested area just south of Interstate 40. Construction workers were roofing an entrance building on Friday, and they have installed fencing and thinned trees to allow for a road through the park. Next come concrete installations replicating rocky hillsides, carved animals as art, and landscape modifications, including using some wrecked cars and a school bus as the structural material underneath concrete to build a 30-foot-tall waterfall at the entrance station. Fence construction has been the biggest difficulty in the snow, said Sean Casey, the park's chief executive officer. When completed, the park will have 22 species and more than 100 North American animals, including bighorn sheep, rocky mountain goats, arctic wolves, lynx, otter, porcupine and skunks. Most will come from animal rescue groups; the bison will come from Casey's own ranch. Casey came to Williams from a similar wildlife park near Mount Rushmore started by his family. Visitors will need to roll up windows when driving through some sections, such as the bear and wolf areas, Casey said. There is no petting zoo or physical contact planned with the animals. "As opposed to petting them, people get to see what they do in their environment," said Vanessa Stoffel, the chief operating officer. Some animals will be allowed to breed; others will be given birth control. It's estimated the animals will eat through 500 pounds of food per week, excluding grain, with some of that food gathered from local food banks. 4M GALLONS OF WATER A YEAR The Williams City Council last July granted the wildlife park access to 4 million gallons of water annually for the park and the ability to trade public goods, such as improvements to public roads, for development fees, and to defer some fees. Construction started two weeks after the land was bought last August. More than 300 people have applied for 60 Bearizona jobs -- 10 or 15 of them year-round -- that will pay from minimum wage to a little more than $14 per hour. Casey raised the $10 million for the first phase of the park on his own from his contacts after 12 banks turned him down, he said. For now, the construction includes an entrance station, fencing, roads, a warehouse and restrooms. A gift shop, and possibly a hotel, would come after this year. Casey hopes to have 100,000 visitors in this first year, and 400,000 visitors annually a few years later, partly planning on tourism from the Grand Canyon. Admission would be $11 for adults this year and $22 next, with different rates for kids and big groups or busloads. The park would be closed in January and February annually, but open the rest of the year. http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2010/05/14/20100514Bearizona05142010.html# Saturday, May 22nd, a new wildlife park will open up in Williams, AZ. It's called Bearizona, and it's home to an array of animals. One steals the show. Sean Casey is the Chief Executive Officer of Bearizona, and he's worked with bears since he was a boy. While he says he's always liked animals, he especially love bears. "They're comical. Some people say they're the clowns of the forest, and they really are." That's one of the reasons he's happy to give them a new home on 160 acres of the Kaibab National Forest. "It's nice to be able to take these animals from places where they were maybe not in great conditions. A lot of them are rescue bears. "We have one [bear] out there that has never seen a tree or dirt and she's three-years-old." Now rescued, Cher must weigh a few hundred pounds, and has much more room to roam. But because, she had been kept captive, she still paces back and forth in one area. It's something you'll likely see if you take a tour through Bearizona. Don't expect to see a standard zoo. Instead of watching animals through a cage, you actually drive through it, on a three mile stretch of dirt road. "It's a beautiful drive through the trees, and you feel like you're out in the woods and then a bear will walk right in front of you," Casey says. "So, it's a little different that way." Keep close watch, because the car window is all that's between you and the animals. A different layout, makes for a different experience. Chief Operating Officer, Vanessa Stoffel, says, "The animals will be roaming freely, so people can expect them to cross the road in front of them. They can expect to see a lot of natural things they'll be doing in the wild." Things like feeding, mating and having babies… all while the kids watch from the car. "The day to day operations are as unpredictable as the animals, " Stoffel adds. The first phase of the park will open with 60 animals. That number is expected to grow tenfold by next Summer. For now, adult tickets are $11 and kids will cost $5 dollars, but those number will likely double next year. below in comment wall I will post a photo from the daily sun of the folks I received message from saying it was okay for me to blog/post photos here on my zazzle page and I offered my 10% yet Sean stated what he did above so my husband and I are still going to use any profits as our Bearizona fund jar to get us there or others because we loved it there. Sure had alot of fun with Buster the Bear too. It was a surprise visit that day but here I have been plugging them on my page & in person and I had not gone yet so I made it there & will FOR SURE be back...I would love to work there...