A Visit We Wish We Hadn’t Made

Remember I said I was going to write about a visit we wish we had not made?  This is it.  Please bear in mind that this is my, actually our, opinion and yours may vary.  That’s okay, but I just need to get this off my chest (mind, heart).

In Winston, OR there is a place called Wildlife Safari.  It is a wonderful, open habitat for all kinds of wild animals.  Theirs is a science facility and they have an excellent cheetah breeding program.  The animals live in the open, in many acres of natural habitat.  Cars are allowed through gates and drive through the habitat on dirt roads.  The animals may or may not be visible, but they are free to roam huge acreages.  Only predator and prey are separated by fences, other species live together much like they do in the wild.  We enjoy this place immensely and have made many visits there with the grands.

In Bandon, OR there is a place called West Coast Game Park, and it’s tag line is “the original walk-thru safari.”  I remembered stopping here many years ago with the kids and feeding the deer that roamed the courtyard.  There weren’t many exotic animals that I could remember, but it was a fun place for kids.  So we stopped.

I asked the lady in the gift shop about the facility before we went in.  It is over 40 acres but it is built on a circle so that the walking is only about three city blocks.  Okay, sounds doable.  The price was pretty steep at $16.50 for seniors 60 and older, but it sounded like fun.  I expected something along the lines of Wildlife Safari only on a much smaller scale.  NOT!!

Feed for the animals is available for $ .50 as you enter.  It is mixed grain in an ice cream cone, and you are warned to NOT hold it up out of reach.  I wouldn’t say the deer are tame, only that they have been conditioned to expect food from humans.  They certainly appear well-fed and I think their quest for food is more out of boredom than actual hunger.


The game park is proud of the fact that the deer, sheep, and goats run free, but it is a very small area for so many animals.  No forage for them, just what they can forage off of people.  I am sure they get hay or something else on a regular basis as they did appear well-fed and healthy.  There is also a small old donkey that wanders around but he was not very friendly.  None of these “free-roaming” animals were “friendly”, they just wanted food. 
The first enclosure housed about a dozen or more wallabies.  One little joey was having a snack, or perhaps looking for a place to nap.


The enclosure was adequate, I suppose, but by no means roomy.  There were a few peacocks and peahens running around but the males had only a couple of tail feathers.  Don’t know if this is a seasonal thing or if there was some other reason for the lack of normal plumage.






Then we saw the big game animals.  There were a couple of leopards, a cougar, a lion, two tigers, one white tiger, two bears, a zebra, an elk, a chimpanzee, and assorted other critters.  The sad thing was, they were all in enclosures about as big as my living room.  Maybe a bit bigger but you get the idea.  Have you ever seen an elk pace?  Back and forth, back and forth in front of his fence.  Nothing else for him to do.  Yes, he had a yard but it was way too small for such a huge animal.

One of the bears was pacing and one was trying to sleep.  Neither was looking very happy. 

But it was the big cats that got to me.  I didn’t take many pictures as I was feeling pretty lousy by then.  Here are a few that Russ and I took.  The ones that weren’t pacing were simply laying around because there was nowhere for them to go.  Although they weren’t in concrete cages, it was almost as bad.  Look into these eyes and tell me if this is a happy animal.


















The camera cannot capture the look of boredom and lifelessness we saw in the eyes of these magnificent animals.  This cougar did nothing but pace.



I am NOT an animal activist, I don’t want to close down all the zoos.  I think many zoos fill a wonderful purpose in educating people about animals and in breeding programs and studies.  Yes, the animals are not free, but they are also not prey and they have all their needs taken care of.  But a facility like the West Coast Game Park exists only to profit from the animals it obtains.  The facility is clean and the animals appear to be in good health but what kind of a life do they have locked up in an area that is not even large enough to get up a fast walk, let alone a run.  If they have over 40 acres there, why aren’t they using more of it to give these animals a better life?  I know why, it’s because if they put the animals in larger facilities, they would not be as highly visible and therefore fewer people would pay money to visit. 

I know this is only my perspective and I expect some will disagree with me.  I only know how it made me feel to walk through that park.  My eyes were leaking as I left and I didn’t spend one penny in their gift shop.  I wish I could un-see what we saw and I wish we had never stopped.  Don’t let them fool you with the “interacting with the animals” line either.  They had one half grown lynx that was on display and you could get into the enclosure with it.  They had two young bears (I wouldn’t call them babies) in a tiny holding pen ready to be displayed for touching.  Other than the annoying deer, goats, and sheep, that was it for “interaction.”

So if you happen to be traveling on Hwy 101 just south of Bandon, OR and you see a sign for the Wild Game Park, do yourself and the animals a favor and go right on by.  I wish we had.