SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — The much-anticipated Johnny Morris’ Wonders of Wildlife Museum & Aquarium opened last week with all the pomp and celebration of a Hollywood extravaganza, but with three outdoors-loving U.S. Presidents serving as headliners and with conservation leaders and fishing industry CEOs replacing the glitterati.
Speaking at the grand opening gala here Thursday were former presidents George H.W. Bush (by video), George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, all of whom congratulated Morris on the realization of his long-held dream to open a massive, 350,000-square-foot museum and aquarium complex.
The facility, adjacent to the flagship Bass Pro Shops store, opened to the public over the weekend.
Larger than the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, it is touted as the “world’s grandest tribute to the conservation movement.”
To underscore that, Morris invited 400 leaders of the most prominent conservation organizations in the country, including B.A.S.S. CEO Bruce Akin, to take part in the opening. Among them were fish and game directors of practically every state, along with other state and federal conservation officials.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke — a former U.S. Navy Seal and the darling of conservation organizations because of his support of outdoor sportsmen’s issues — started things off with an underwater press conference of sorts. Donning a wetsuit and diving into a huge aquarium, Zinke fielded questions from fifth-graders who are students in the WOLF (Wonders of the Ozarks Learning Facility) program, a partnership between Bass Pro Shops and Springfield schools.
Educating young people about the outdoors was one of the driving motivations behind Morris’ decision to fund and build Wonders of Wildlife.
A look inside the Wonders of Wildlife Museum and Aquarium
In a private interview prior to the opening, Morris said his overarching goal is to “inspire kids and get them connected to where we’ve come from. I want to help them appreciate that hunting and fishing are great American traditions. And I want to salute and make everybody aware of the incredible role that hunters and anglers have played in conservation.”
Morris also emphasized the financial contributions hunters and anglers make to the resources.
“Most people — even our customers — aren’t aware that sportsmen really lobbied to tax themselves with a federal excise tax that collects 10 percent on every fishing rod, every lure, every plug, every shotgun and every box of ammunition, and all that money goes back to our state agencies,” he said. “They do an awesome job, but if it weren’t for that, funding would just dry up in most states.”
The museum displays are heavy on bass fishing, and understandably so. Adjacent to the Bass Fishing Hall of Fame museum — which enshrines pioneers and superstars in bass fishing —there’s a “Lunker Lake” aquarium that contains about 20 double-digit largemouth, including a few 15-pounders.
But overall, the 1 1/2-mile course through the museum complex features an eclectic collection of wildlife and fisheries exhibits. Deer hunters will drool over the Boone & Crockett Club’s Collection of Heads and Horns, with mounts of record-book whitetails they can only dream about.
There are dioramas and game animals from every continent, and aquariums contain almost every freshwater and saltwater creature people would want to see. All told, there are 1.5 million gallons of water behind glass, including the 300,000-gallon circular open ocean habitat teeming with sea life ranging from sharks and leopard rays to Goliath grouper.
Morris said the Wonders of Wildlife Museum & Aquarium has been a dream of his for about 25 years. A much more modest museum and aquarium occupied the space several years ago, he noted. “It did okay, but people didn’t leave there and say, ‘Wow, you gotta go see this place.’”
He decided to rebuild and replace that with something on a much “grander” scale. And he did. Having spent the better part of a day touring and experiencing the new and vastly improved Wonders of Wildlife facility, I can say without hesitation: “Wow! You gotta go see this place.”
