Champion of Chimpanzees Dies

It was with enormous sadness that we heard the news on March 18th this year, that Jim Cronin, founder and Director of Monkey World, and ape rescuer extraordinaire, had died.

Jim Cronin

Shocked by his sudden and untimely death we have since been burdened by a real sense that a truly great person, and friend, had departed from this world far too young. This planet is a far less safe place for apes as a result, for Jim was someone whom one could rely on, totally, to sniff out, hound and expose unscrupulous entertainers, zoo-owners and others who abuse chimps planet-wide for reasons of profit or ignorance. It was Jim who first brought the use of baby chimps by beach photographers in Spain and other such beach-holiday destinations to public attention. As a result, fewer tourists support this horrible practice and many beach photographers have ceased trading. Early undercover television footage revealed how he would refuse to back down in the face of physical and verbal assaults and, all too often, official indifference, and would strive on until he got what he had come for. In 1987, Jim opened Monkey World. Initially, it became home to nine rescued chimps, including the first 4 to be released from the notorious Biomedical Primate Research Centre (BPRC) in Holland. The ape rescue centre is now inhabited by 160 orphaned primates from 13 countries, including the largest group of chimpanzees outside Africa.

Jim never thought twice about describing the way his chimps felt in the same language that we use to describe human emotions and compared the physically and emotionally scarred chimps - some tortured with cigarette butts, force-fed tranquillisers, isolated and beaten - as having the same psychological problems as abused humans. They needed to learn to trust again, and required careful rehabilitation before integration into family groups. He did not believe that they should be permitted to breed - after all, the world was already too full of unwanted captive chimps, and, abused female chimps would make poor mothers. As a result Monkey World was one of the pioneers in captive primate birth control. Jim died, aged 55, in his native New York, of liver cancer, diagnosed only 8 weeks earlier. His wife Alison, who was co-Director of the centre, continues to run Monkey World and has said she will carry on Jim's important work. Jim is survived by his daughter, Eleanor, mother, brother and sister.

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