A tribute to Jim Cronin

[Guest guest]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/world/europe/21cronin.html

Jim Cronin, Foe of Illegal Trade in Primates, Dies at 55

By DENNIS

HEVESI<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/dennis_heves\

i/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

Published: March 21, 2007

 

Jim Cronin, a self-trained zoologist who built a wildlife park on a deserted

pig farm in southern England, then roamed the world with his wife to rescue

illegally captured chimpanzees, orangutans and other primates, died Saturday

in Manhattan. Mr. Cronin, who lived at the wildlife park, Monkey World, in

Dorset, England, was 55.

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Barry

Gomer

 

Jim Cronin rescued captured and abused chimps around the world.

 

The cause was liver cancer, said his wife, Alison.

 

Mr. Cronin's work with his wife, who holds a doctorate in biological

anthropology from Cambridge

University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/c\

ambridge_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,

has been credited with focusing international attention on the smuggling of

endangered species.

 

Monkey World, the 62-acre park that Mr. Cronin opened and began to cover

with shrubbery and trees in 1987, now draws about 500,000 visitors a year.

It is regularly featured on the television series " Monkey Business, " which

appears 14 times a year in about 200 countries on the Discovery Network's

Animal Planet channel.

 

Nicholas A. Robinson, a professor of environmental law at Pace

University<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/p\

ace_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,

said yesterday that Mr. Cronin " created this entire process from scratch and

he clearly was among the first in Europe to do it, and one of the first in

the world. "

 

" What he was doing, " Professor Robinson said, " was taking the Convention on

International Trade in Endangered Species " — a United

Nations<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/unit\

ed_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>treaty

signed by most countries in 1973 — " along with national laws on

wildlife and getting them enforced. "

 

Although American citizens — he was born in Yonkers, she in San Diego — the

Cronins were honored last year by Queen Elizabeth II as Members of the Order

of the British Empire, for their services to animal welfare.

 

Starting in 1996, the Cronins made dozens of trips to Africa, Southeast Asia

and Turkey — posing as potential buyers, secretively taking photographs,

recording addresses and then leading the local police in raids against

animal smugglers. In 1998, for instance, they coordinated simultaneous raids

on a pet shop and a street booth at a spice market in Istanbul where baby

chimpanzees were being sold.

 

" We were each given police escorts with machine guns, " Mrs. Cronin said in

an telephone interview yesterday. " Still, the people were drawing their

fingers across their throats. "

 

Two chimps that had had their teeth removed and been drugged were taken to

wildlife sanctuaries in Turkey.

 

The Cronins have rescued animals from circuses, from laboratories and from

use in TV commercials.

 

James Michael Cronin was born Nov. 15, 1951, a son of John and Margaret

Battaglia Cronin. His father was a union official.

 

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his mother, who lives in Yonkers;

a daughter, Eleanor, of Plymouth, England; a sister, Debbie Nuñez of

Yonkers; and a brother, John, of Cold Spring, N.Y., the director of the

Beacon Institute for Rivers and Estuaries in Beacon, N.Y.

 

Mr. Cronin did not go to college. But as a child he was fascinated by

wildlife, voraciously reading books and watching documentaries on the

subject.

 

After high school, he began traveling across the United States, working at

odd jobs like constructing elevators and doing steel work on bridges. In the

late '70s, he got a job as a keeper at the Bronx

Zoo<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/b/bronx_zo\

o_wildlife_conservation_park/index.html?inline=nyt-org>.

 

 

His passion for the animals caught the attention of zoo officials and led to

a recommendation that he be hired by John Aspinall, the director of the

Howletts Zoo in Kent, England. There, he began working with monkeys and

gorillas.

 

" But he had it in the back of his mind that he would have his own wildlife

park someday, " Mrs. Cronin said, " and that he would create environs that are

akin to natural environments. "

 

In 1987, Mr. Cronin received a $35,000 business loan, guaranteed by the

British government, and signed a lease for the abandoned pig farm in Dorset.

One by one, he began constructing fenced-in two-acre enclosures, filling

them with climbing structures made from telephone poles, ropes, mats and

fire hoses.

 

Soon after, he heard about baby chimps being used as photographers' props —

drugged and dressed in costumes — along the beaches of Spain. Working with

local animal activists, he approached Spanish authorities and agreed that if

the police confiscated the animals, he would provide them with a refuge.

Since then, 35 chimpanzees have been taken to Monkey World from Spain.

 

Monkey World is now home to 165 animals, including 59 chimps, 13 orangutans

and 18 gibbons as well as woolly monkeys, marmosets, lemurs and capuchin

monkeys, and is a tourist attraction that doubles as an education in

international wildlife law.

 

Mrs. Cronin, who began working with her future husband in 1990, said they

had cooperated with governments in 14 countries to stop the international

trade in primates.

 

In 2003, she said, they went to Thailand, where they spotted 115 orangutans

in several parks. " Orangutans only come from two islands, Borneo and

Sumatra, " she said. " Smugglers would kill the mothers, stuff the babies in

baskets and then smuggle them out by small boats. "

 

Within a week, the parks were raided and the animals distributed to

sanctuaries in Borneo, where they may eventually be released into the wild.