The new "Texas Wild!" exhibit, opening at the zoo here on Friday, is billed as an exploration of the big state's diverse wildlife and terrain. But it has another message for visitors: Hunting animals is OK.

In developing the eight-acre exhibit, Fort Worth Zoo officials wanted to showcase not just regional animals but man's positive role in the environment. After all, they say, humans have just as much right to use the land and prey on other animals as the wolf or the lion.

The difference? "We're just predators with a checkbook," says Lynda Gearheart, the zoo's communications director.

That's not the approach taken by most zoos. But this is a state dominated by the worlds of ranching and oil, where guns are considered a birthright, and businessmen are tired of being demonized as enemies of the environment.

The project is the brainchild of socialite Ramona Bass, wife of Fort Worth billionaire Lee Bass. Eleven years ago, Mrs. Bass was driving her four-year-old daughter home from preschool when the child began repeating part of her day's lessons. "She announced from the backseat that we were all going to die from pollution and all the animals were going to go extinct because of what man has done," recalls Mrs. Bass, 46 years old.

The Basses consider themselves ardent wildlife conservationists. They are also hunting enthusiasts who banned the movie "Bambi" in their household because it portrays hunters as evil. Mr. Bass is chairman of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the state agency that regulates hunting and fishing. Mrs. Bass comes from an old Texas ranching family.

She also happens to be co-chairwoman of the Fort Worth Zoo -- just the place, she thought, to get a more positive message out to children. Oil company royalties, Mrs. Bass points out, help prevent large ranches from being sold off and broken up, which would destroy valuable animal habitat. Offshore rigs make habitats for undersea creatures, much like a man-made reef.

Mrs. Bass has been increasingly involved in the zoo, supporting it through an overhaul in the 1990s that earned it a reputation for quality and innovation -- and backing its privatization. (Though independent, it still receives about 20% of its $16 million annual budget from the city.)

Excited about her Texas Wild! concept, she dove into such details as picking paint colors and writing text for the display panels, such as the one highlighting President Teddy Roosevelt, an avid hunter and outdoorsman, as one of the nation's first environmentalists. So deep was her involvement that her friends began to refer to it as "Ramona's Magnificent Obsession."

Mrs. Bass says she wanted to avoid guilt trips but give people a sense of personal responsibility. "Sure, bad things have been done," she says. "But we are not the problem. We are the solution."

Inside the exhibit's 13,000-square-foot educational center, visitors are told that hunting and fishing-related funds contributed $130 million last year to wildlife conservation efforts in Texas. By contrast, the exhibit points out, hiking and camping contributed nothing. Another display lectures that conservation can't just look at each individual animal -- it must consider an entire population. For instance, hunting deer helps keep them from overpopulating and running out of food or habitat.

The Fort Worth project focuses on what has become known as "reality-based conservation," the notion that man's actions can be OK. That broader idea of conservation has been embraced by such groups as the World Conservation Union and CITES, the 160-country Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.

"In a human-dominated world, we have to balance these different needs," says Michael Hutchins, director of conservation for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. "Our relationship with nature is very complex and very paradoxical. We love animals, and we eat them. We value their freedom, and we keep them for pets."

Since the Fort Worth Zoo is aimed at families, not conservationists, it tried to bring the ideas from the theoretical to the practical. Texas Wild!, originally conceived as a modest exhibit with a $7 million budget, ballooned over the years to a $40 million project that combines elements of an amusement park, interactive children's museum and zoo featuring 107 species on view throughout the grounds.

In the exhibit on South Texas brush country, visitors see how utility companies save hawks from electrocution by building nesting platforms on top of power poles. In the Piney Woods display, an alligator-skin handbag makes the point that environmental efforts have so effectively brought back the once-endangered American alligator that alligator farming is now acceptable.

A series of placards parallels the caveman's pursuit of wild game for food with the modern-day purchase of turkeys from the local butcher. The "play barn" shows how domestic livestock are used for food, clothing and household items.

"Texas Wild! rejects the utopian preservationist viewpoint which would have us believe that if man would only disappear, nature would be perfect," reads fund-raising material for the exhibit.

Michael Fouraker, the Fort Worth Zoo director and former chief of animal programs, led the design effort and tried to incorporate his belief that recognizing the economic value of wildlife gives humans more incentive to help preserve species. For example, a computer game in the exhibit shows how ranchers can sometimes make more money by nurturing deer populations and selling hunting leases than by grazing cattle on their land.

Mr. Fouraker knows the idea won't sit well with everyone, even in Texas. He tried to navigate carefully, commissioning research reports from staff and wildlife groups. Even so, some conservationists are uncomfortable with the approach.

The concept, also called "sustainable use" of wildlife, "means nothing more than killing wildlife," says Mark Berman, of Earth Island Institute in San Francisco, an animal and habitat preservation group. "That's basically what they're saying -- that it's OK to go out and kill wildlife."

Catriona Glazebrook, former head of the Texas Audubon Society who reviewed plans for the exhibit two years ago, worries that the amusement-park atmosphere will make youngsters complacent about conservation. "It's like wearing the rose-tinted glasses if children go there and believe this is the real story," she says.

The exhibit does deal a bit with humans' greed and general messiness, pointing out that government regulation helps keep people from getting carried away. And it condemns human abuses such as the Texas tradition of "rattlesnake roundups," which can include pouring gasoline down snake holes, because it kills other animals such as turtles, rabbits and bats.

Mrs. Bass is convinced the approach is appropriate. "What we really want is for people to question what they've been taught all these years, and come away with an understanding of something more complex," she explains. "After all, we're all in this together."