Have you ever wanted to spend a day hanging out with wolves? Seacrest Wolf Preserve, a nature preserve in northern Florida, gives visitors a firsthand look at wolves.
Founded in 1999 by Cynthia and Wayne Watkins, this unique nonprofit has raised wolves to be comfortable around humans, and they let people get close to their wolves for a $25 fee.
"We offer one of the rarest opportunities in the world for humans to see wolves up close and personal," Cynthia Watkins said.
Seacrest was founded with the hope that if people got to see wolves and interact with them, they would have a vested interest in helping wolves survive in the wild. Many species of wolves are endangered, and the survival of wolves in the wild is constantly threatened by humans.
"By teaching tolerance and respect for these important wild species we hope to educate the public on the vital role these animals play within the natural world, and cultivate a passion to protect them in the wild," per the Seacrest website.
However, some experts say that humans should not mingle with wolves, because wolves are unpredictable and dangerous. Dave Mech, a researcher who has studied wolves for decades, says that letting people get close to Seacrest's wolves is not safe.
"They are still unpredictable because they are wild animals. Wolves are not like dogs. Dogs have been domesticated for thousands of years and that unpredictability and wildness is taken out of them because of the breeding," Mech said.
There have been at least two cases of people being killed by wolves in wolf preserves in the last 20 years. In 2012 a worker was killed by wolves at a wildlife park in Sweden. In 1996, a biologist was killed by wolves at the Haliburton Forest & Wild Life Preserve in Canada.
Visitors to Seacrest must watch an educational video before they are allowed to mingle with the wolves. The facility also has trained workers on location for every tour. They do not allow children younger than six to enter the wolf preserve.
"We are not some little roadside zoo," Watkins added.
The Watkins family regularly interacts with their wolves, including petting and kissing them. They have 30 wolves on hand in the park. Seacrest is the country's largest wolf preserve in the Southeast.
"Little Red Riding Hood was wrong and the wolf is not the bad guy but indeed a very important keystone species," Watkins said.
