Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center

Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center is a nonprofit wildlife park and education center in West Yellowstone, Montana, one block from Yellowstone’s West Entrance. It is outside the park and has separate admission. Here you can see grizzly bears, gray wolves, river otters, birds of prey, fish, amphibians and reptiles in managed habitats, alongside exhibits about the Yellowstone ecosystem. Many of its animals cannot survive in the wild, so come for close viewing and the stories behind their care, not as a substitute for spotting wild animals on a park drive.

Check the day’s program schedule when you arrive: naturalist talks, wolf pack chats and children’s activities are part of the experience. Give yourself about two hours or longer if you want the exhibits and talks; visitor reports range from a quick pass through to most of a day. Animals are not performing on a schedule, and some may be resting or off exhibit, a tradeoff visitors mention. The center lists free parking, picnic tables around its outside perimeter and a gift shop.

Bears have indoor and outdoor viewing areas. The Naturalist Cabin sits between wolf habitats, with floor-to-ceiling windows for watching the wolves. The river otter habitat has pools, streams and a waterfall. An interactive Yellowstone ecosystem exhibit adds life-sized dioramas, video, games and natural objects. Birds of prey are shown seasonally, May through November.

It opened in 1993 as the Grizzly Discovery Center, conceived by Lewis S. Robinson as a sanctuary for bears removed from the wild. A wolf exhibit and ten captive-born wolves followed in 1996. When closure threatened in 1999, staff and supporters formed a nonprofit and raised funds to buy the center. It received Association of Zoos and Aquariums accreditation in 2001.

Bo arrived after learning to get unsecured food at Rainbow Point Campground near West Yellowstone, including from a cooler, pickup and tent. After he climbed onto an occupied vehicle and hazing failed, managers decided he could not safely return to the wild. His story makes the center’s purpose tangible: food-conditioned bears can become dangerous around people, even when people caused the problem by leaving food accessible. Bo’s name refers to Rainbow Point.

The center works with agencies to test bear-resistant food and garbage containers. A product is baited and placed in a bear habitat for a 60-minute test. If bears cannot open it or reach the food, it may qualify for Interagency Grizzly Bear Committee certification. It is a close-up look at the gear and research behind keeping bears from becoming food-conditioned.

The Banks of the Yellowstone River Otter Exhibit opened in 2019 after ten years of design and construction. It pairs North American river otters with native riparian species and presents them in a habitat built around water. Follow the streams and pools to see the otters’ environment and the larger river food web the exhibit is meant to explain.