♪ ♪ - Jay Christie: We 're situated on 75 acres here.

And it's got some interesting rolling topography to it.

- Jay Christie's lifelong dream is nestled amongst farm pastures in Southern Wisconsin.

- It was so evocative of the savanna areas of East Africa.

And, of course, this originally was a savanna.

- Good morning.

- This is Safari Lake Geneva.

- It's an institution that was founded in the interest of helping save wildlife around the world.

Folks, if you didn't hear, I'm Jungle Jay.

I'm one of your co-hosts today.

I also founded this place.

Does anyone have any questions?

- Jungle Jay, as he likes to be called, founded this drive-through wildlife park in 2016.

- Look at that big animal.

- Well, it's a dream come true for me.

I've been really quite obsessive about animals since I was very young.

In fact, "zoo" was the first word I learned how to read.

Safari is the opposite of a zoo in that the animals roam at liberty, much as they would in the wild, and people are in the cages, of course, their own cars.

- Feeding zone starts here.

- Unlike a real safari, our guests are allowed to actually feed the animals, which makes it very interactive.

- I'm doing it.

I'm doing it!

[gasps] Come on, buddy.

You want some?

You want some, big boy?

- You're being surrounded on all sides by these animals.

- Look at those antlers.

- Whoa.

- Wow.

- It might just be that this is every bit as exciting as an actual African safari because it's a photographer's paradise.

- I'm holding on for dear life.

- OK. - Oh.

[laughter] That was a good one.

- The animals represent every continent except Antarctica.

- There's an ostrich.

- I never seen an ostrich before.

I only seen turkeys.

- We do have animals from Africa, like these ostriches, zebras, giraffes.

She might be showing me that she's bigger than she actually is.

And therefore, she doesn't want to get pushed around too much.

We also have animals from Asia, like the nilgai antelope, the largest of the Asian antelope.

- They don't-- - Hi, Layla.

Hi, Layla, right there.

Good girl.

- We got some big, big animals coming up, including our bison.

That is right, they are bison, not buffalo.

- Whoa, look at that one!

- We have the largest mammal native to the Americas, and that's the Plains bison, the same type that used to roam these very hills just a few hundred years ago.

The worst bucket bandits are here.

We're allowing people to do things that would be maybe ill-advised in the wild.

And the bison, of course, are a premium example of that.

- None of the animals on this game reserve were actually born in foreign lands.

- Every single one of them you see here was born right here in good old North America.

My point is we don't have animals here that were captured from the wild.

- In the wild, some of these same animals are under the threat of extinction.

- Addax are actually the most endangered antelope in the world right now.

We do have three right there.

- The world's wildlife is under tremendous pressures.

This is really an excellent opportunity for people to develop an empathy for animals and wildlife conservation, in particular.

- For Jungle Jay, an Af rican-style conservation park on a 20th-century dairy farm didn't seem that far-fetched.

- At one point, quite clearly, it was a working dairy farm.

We think that this is a great repurposing because that same barn that a hundred years ago held hay for dairy cattle now holds hay for some of the most imperiled species from around the world.

All right, so you just kind of hold it out like a wand.

They'll just grab it with their tongue.

- Yeah.

- That tongue is actually 18 inches long.

♪ ♪ Safari Lake Geneva is a conservation park.

- She's happy.

- A portion of our proceeds every year goes to help support wild animals and wildlife conservation here in the Americas, as well as in Africa and Asia.

Sure.

Certainly, a tremendous sense of satisfaction being able to make a living from what otherwise would probably be a maybe expensive hobby.

- From a little boy with a wish to a reality that turned out better than his wildest dreams.

- Jungle Jay is definitely in his element out here on the burr oak savanna.

I feel so fortunate that we did land on this property.

It's really fulfilling, almost beyond words.

♪ ♪