If Dave Bishop were to write a book, it might be called All I Need to Know I Learned From My Wolf Enclosure.

Bishop, who manages the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre, has learned as much about business from his unusual job as he has about life.

Communication, Bishop says, and the ability to work together are two of the key things his wolf pack has taught him that translate into important business skills. For Bishop's facility, and other small specialty zoos across Ontario, keeping an eye on the bottom line goes hand-in-hand with keeping the animals in good care.

The Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre, part of the private 60,000-acre Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve about 90 kilometres north of Peterborough, is the only facility of its kind in North America.

Photo courtesy of Wings of Paradise Butterfly Conservatory
Some of the centre's 2,000 butterflies gather on a feeding station at the Wings of Paradise Butterfly Conservatory, which draws 60,000 children annually.

The centre has a 15-acre enclosure for the wolves and a 5,000-sq.-ft. interpretive centre - and while that may sound like a lot for seven or eight animals, wolf dynamics are a tricky business.

"Ten would be our maximum," Bishop says. "More than that and the enclosure's so small, it becomes more difficult for the wolves to maintain control."

Which is where the difficult balance of running a specialty zoo lies - the animals need to be kept in a natural and appropriate setting, in a manner in which people will enjoy coming to see them.

"That's why we built the interpretive centre," Bishop says.

He adds that, unlike a traditional zoo where people are guaranteed they will be able to see animals, if the wolves do not want to be seen on a particular day, they will not be seen. In the full foliage of summer, for instance, only a small fraction of the total wolf enclosure is visible to visitors. But that is just how nature works, Bishop says.

"The wolf centre is nothing without the wolves, so if you, in your business plan and in your ideals of what you want to do, if you detract from that and make the wolf more visible, you're taking away what you believe in, the concept of sustainability. The wolf has to be your No. 1 priority," he says.

Understandably, marketing a wolf habitat that exists far from an urban centre - at the end of a long road - has its challenges. But the centre draws approximately 20,000 guests annually to its little corner of the Haliburton reserve.

Bishop believes the wolf has such a mythic power for people, especially Canadians, that the animals, to some extent, sell themselves.

"With the wolf being such a romanticized animal in Canada, the romantic symbol of the North, you're very fortunate in that you get a lot of media attention from that," Bishop says.

The facility functions with a small staff who interact with the animals only at a minimum, feeding the pack natural foods including roadkill supplied by the OPP and the Ministry of Transport. Staff also intervene when wolf pups are born every year - the pups are typically removed from the enclosure in order to maintain size constraints and find homes in reputable educational facilities that will care properly for them.

While the wolf centre works to control its small population, another specialty zoo - the Wings of Paradise Butterfly Conservatory in Cambridge - is at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Wings of Paradise is a 10,000-sq.-ft. conservatory with more than 2,000 butterflies, as well as live insect displays and a busy honey-producing beehive.

The conservatory came about when a local resident was looking for a home for his butterfly collection and Doug Wilson, president and CEO of Wings of Paradise, saw the need for that kind of attraction in Cambridge. The site, operated by a staff of about 25, draws on tourists as well as school trips, hosting approximately 60,000 children annually for half-day educational programs.

As with the wolf centre, the key to quality is maintaining an environment in which the creatures flourish - a captive environment as close to their natural conditions as facilities allow.

"We work really hard at maintaining an environment that is as close as possible to a natural environment - though a butterfly in this conservatory has an environment that is free of storms, so they're not going to have to face a thunderstorm or a hurricane," Wilson says. He adds that other perks the butterflies enjoy include nectar'-producing plants and fruit trays.

The facility needs to be maintained between 24° and 28° C, making operating costs in the winter rise dramatically. To alleviate this, the facility upgraded the conservatory to be more energy-efficient, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent and saving more than $8,000 in energy costs.

But there also have been costs that have come in the hits the tourism industry has taken in recent years.

"Economic conditions are tight. Tourism has been really hard hit with SARS and the war in Iraq and a weakening U.S. dollar," Wilson says. "So that makes it kind of a challenge to try to keep the number of visitors coming through the door."

In an effort to keep up its numbers, Wings of Paradise has expanded its service offerings and has begun to promote itself as an alternative wedding site, as well as a small conference centre.

"We have two meeting rooms for companies looking to hold a meeting at an alternate place. But when they take a break from a sales meeting or an annual general meeting, instead of going out to get a smoke, people walk through the conservatory," Wilson says.

The peace of mind people get from seeing nature up close and alive at facilities such as the Haliburton wolf centre and the Cambridge butterfly conservatory is more likely to be the exception rather than the rule in Ontario, however.

Since there are no regulations for zoos, dozens - or perhaps hundreds - keep animals in unsuitable conditions.

"Anybody can go out and acquire zebras, spitting cobras, lions, tigers, monkeys," says Rob Laidlaw of Zoocheck Canada, a Toronto-based watchdog organization for zoo and other captivity businesses. "No government agency will say you can't do that and no government agency will inspect you."

Although Laidlaw says the Haliburton Forest Wolf Centre and Wings of Paradise are well-maintained, ethically run facilities, he also believes with regulation the province could have much more humane - and better - zoos.

"I think just generally Ontario is behind the times compared not only to other jurisdictions in North America, but to many other jurisdictions around the world," he says. "It's time to get with the rest of the world - and the rest of Canada for that matter - and have something that can control these places."

(Liz Clayton can be reached at clayton@businessedge.ca)