REXBURG, Idaho -- A cinnamon-colored bear ambles over to the green GMC camper truck, sniffs the tires and hops on its hind legs. The 400-pound beast paws at the hood and laps at the bug-spattered windshield, behind which sits a giddy young family of four packed on the truck's bench seat.

The kids' eyes grow as big as checkers. Mom clicks pictures with her disposable camera. Dad keeps the truck in gear, ready to roll in a split second if the critter turns testy.

Welcome to Yellowstone.

Almost.

It is called ``Yellowstone Bear World,'' and it is Idaho's latest curious -- and potentially dangerous -- private collection of big game.

In 1995, dozens of lions and tigers and crossbreeds escaped their ramshackle kennels of Ligertown near Lava Hot Springs and attacked their owner. An army of law-enforcement officers with high-powered rifles were called in. Petrified officers gunned down, one by one, 19 of the roaring, mangy felines and the nation's attention focused on the little town whose streets ran red with cat blood.

Ligertown, which was nothing more than a bizarre collection of pets, was subsequently razed and its owners tossed in jail after being charged with public nuisance and animal cruelty.

Now about 100 miles up Interstate 15 and less than 40 miles from Yellowstone National Park borders, a Rexburg entrepreneur has, critics say, skirted state rules and shipped in a dozen black bears and several of their massive Kodiak cousins as headliners for the state's newest tourist draw.

Yellowstone Bear World is a quirky crack at re-creating the happy days of Yellowstone National Park, when vacationing families during the 1950s and '60s often shared their picnic lunches with the bears through windows of their station wagons.

The 60-acre Bear World boasts more than bears. It has peacocks, reindeer, massive elk and ducks that have had their wings clipped so they cannot fly over the park's 8-foot-high perimeter fence.

Park owner Mike Ferguson bought the land along the Snake River last month, and Bear World opened so quickly that wildlife advocates critical of the park are still baffled it exists.

Ferguson already has spent more than $500,000 and, like a bomber pilot weaving through the black puffs of anti-aircraft artillery, has so far deftly maneuvered through the state and federal regulations that could have killed Monday's opening.

Critics note that Ferguson has ripped up about five acres of wetlands near the banks of the Snake River, only to be slapped with a ``cease and desist'' order from the Army Corps of Engineers. And they say he has imported more than a dozen black and several larger brown bears by diving through a loophole in the state's no-bear-imports law that was left open for circuses and traveling animal shows.

Ferguson maintains he is playing by the rules.

Unlike Ligertown, he notes, this is a for-profit operation and consequently subject to federal Department of Agriculture regulations, with which he says he is in full compliance. He also says the bears will not escape. They are contained by two sets of electric fences as well as two 8-foot-high game fences.

Ferguson says the park's current bears are temporary tenants, and he hopes to convince the state to change its laws later this summer so he can buy and keep a permanent collection of bears. The current troop is owned by a Minnesota trainer who rents the animals out for commercials and movies.

As for the wetlands, Ferguson said he thought he had permission to build his 2.5 miles of roads, and he has applied for an after-the-fact permit.

But he said those are just details.

While he says he has plenty more work to do -- including building a gigantic movie theater, petting zoo and visitor center -- the main attraction is open for business.

All that stands between a prospective visitor and a Kodiak bear, among the world's biggest meat-eating beasts, is an $8.50 ticket, a windshield and telephone-cord-thick electric fence. The less-menacing black bears are allowed to roam freely up to automobiles inside the park's bear compound.

The rules are simple for visitors who must sign a waiver acknowledging the inherent dangers of getting nose to nose with an omnivore: Do not feed the animals and keep your windows up. Bears are not supposed to climb on vehicles.

For security, employees buzz around the park in Subarus and Hondas, admonishing visitors to keep their windows rolled up tight and to keep moving if the bears make contact with the cars. They carry pepper spray just in case a bear gets too wild. They also have tranquilizer guns on site.

The park has had more than 200 visitors during some days of its opening week, and Ferguson said he expects to pull in big numbers this weekend. His target audience is tourists on their way to and from the real Yellowstone, where bear sightings are far from a sure thing.

``Bears have always been a big part of Yellowstone, and they're no longer there. At least you will rarely see them,'' says Ferguson. ``We're trying to let people view the wildlife that they read about.''

Indeed, bears are hard to spot in Yellowstone these days, and that is by design.

For Yellowstone's first 100 years, the park did not do much to sway visitors from feeding bears everything from candy bars to scraps of hamburger. Park operators also opened up Yellowstone's garbage dumps each evening so visitors seated on specially built bleachers could watch the once-wild beasts treat themselves to a buffet of food scraps.

In the early '70s, the Park Service took a U-turn on that policy. It stopped allowing bears to feed at park dumps and forced them back into the punishing natural world, left to grub out a living on bugs, nuts and berries, as well as an occasional chunk of flesh.

Park biologists call the bears' return to the Yellowstone backcountry a tremendous success.

Ferguson sees it differently. He longs for the days of his childhood when his family was practically assured a bear sighting every time they drove through the gates.

So his version of Yellowstone guarantees a grizzly sighting, and recent visitors were treated to watching trainers pop marshmallows in a grizzly bear's mouth.

``These bears don't eat ants and maggots like bears in the wilderness,'' says Bear World employee Steve Byington. ``They eat grape jelly and honey.'' And licorice-flavored feed.

Ferguson said he hopes to use the exhibit to teach people about bears, but he also has entertainment on his mind. All of the bears in the park have been bred in captivity and many have been used for television and movies. In fact, three of the park's grizzlies were gone Wednesday, shipped off to Toronto to do a commercial for Rice Krispie Treats.

A big male bear will wear an apron and play mama bear in the commercial.

``And the cubs get to wear raincoats and backpacks and go to school and eat their Rice Krispie Treats,'' says bear trainer Chris Koivunen.

``I'd call it obscene. Particularly the idea of having performing bears.'' -- Ted Chu, a regional wildlife manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game

Ferguson hopes to keep the show going at his park once he gets his theater built.

``They may [show] a segment of the movie they did and then have them re-enact it on the stage,'' he says. ``It will be pretty cool.''

``I'd call it obscene,'' growls Ted Chu, a regional wildlife manager for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. ``Particularly the idea of having performing bears.''

Koivunen said that is a purist's perspective.

She said she wishes all bears could live in the wild, but the modern world has gobbled up the bruins' habitat so it is not possible.

``I think what Mike is trying to do with this park is educate people and change their perceptions,'' she says. ``If we can get carfulls of kids coming through and seeing these bears playing and running in their own natural [setting] . . . then maybe the next generation will allow them to be in the wild.''

Others do not buy that.

``I just think it's a sad commentary on our society, that we have to go through some Disney World-like park to see wildlife,''says Marv Hoyt of the conservation group Greater Yellowstone Coalition. ``This is the American West, and we have probably more public lands than any other part of the world and we have abundant wildlife. This just cheapens the whole idea of wildlife and it removes the American public one more step from the real world.''

Which is exactly where many people on vacation want to go.

``I suspect he'll be very successful,'' says Yellowstone's historian, Lee Whittlesey.

Unlike area wildlife advocates, Whittlesey said most visitors will not bother to ponder whether Ferguson's park is a commercial perversion of one of America's great treasures.

``The basic American vacationer is never going to consider the deeper things -- how this zoo relates to the great history and ecology of the grand reservation that is Yellowstone,'' says Whittlesey. ``That's asking a whole lot of your basic Joe American. All he is interested in is having a good time with his kids. And the chance to get them off his back for a while so he and the wife can enjoy a sandwich and maybe a beer in peace.''