The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge’s new visitor’s center has finished architectural construction and will soon be working on its exhibits.
Supervisory Park Ranger Matt Connors said he was just down in St. Paul,Minnesota, where he was previewing the fabrication of the exhibits that will be installed.
Connors: “Yeah right now the exhibits are still down in St. Paul and they’re going into containers this week and next week, and they’ll be shipped up and I’ll start to install those in later November early December. I was just in the visitor center today looking in on one of our artist who is painting murals on the sides of the walls through the exhibit hall and they’re getting close, they’re at the point where they’re putting flooring and they’re putting up trim and that kind of thing.”
He also detailed what they hope visitors will experience when the center opens.
Connors: “That they were to walk through all the major habitats on the refuge from the oceans to the ice fields in less than a few minutes and when I saw walk through I don’t mean just looking at photographs or reading about descriptions, when you walk into the entryway you’re going to actually walk through a crevice in a glacier. And then as you walk around you’ll see some alpine rock with Dall Sheep looking at you, life size mounts, and as you go around the corner you’ll see all types of habitat in the forest and all the animals that dwell within there. And then a big surprise at the end but I’m now going to give that away yet.”
The refuge has said the new attraction is likely to open in spring 2015.