Jim Cronin

It was during Cronin's years working as a zoo keeper at the Howletts Zoo that he was notified about the plight of chimps being abused. These African great apes were being smuggled from the wild by illegal poachers and being transported abroad to Europe, where the young chimpanzees were being purchased then used as photographic props by photographers on beach resorts in Spain. These chimps would suffer horrible abuse – having their teeth knocked out to prevent them biting tourists, drugged to remain sedate, and physically beaten to remain submissive and easy to handle before growing too big and being killed to be simply replaced by another. Cronin was infuriated by the fate that these magnificent apes encountered and decided to dedicate his life in trying to solve the problem.

Cronin's sanctuary had successfully recruited a number of Primate Care Staff who see that the day-to-day requirements of the primates are met. Veterinary consultants were brought in to help treat the animals and Adoption Schemes were set up to allow the park to continue its rescue and rehabilitation work. The biggest rescue the centre undertook was that of the 19 retired stump-tailed macaques from a medical research laboratory in the UK; but the rescue mission in 2008, of the 88 capuchin monkeys from a medical research laboratory in Chile, took the record of the largest rescue of primates in the world.

The television series Monkey Business (made by Meridian Broadcasting and shown on ITV Meridian in the UK and on Animal Planet worldwide) has documented the Cronin's frequent rescue missions and undercover investigations throughout Europe and Asia for the past 10 years. Beginning in 2007, Monkey Business was replaced with Monkey Life, which also documents the goings-on within Monkey World.

Following a brief battle with liver cancer, Cronin died on 17 March 2007 at the Cabrini Medical Center, Manhattan, New York. He was survived by his daughter Eleanor, from his first marriage, and his wife Alison Cronin. Since his death, Monkey World has been run by Alison and his close friend Jeremy Keeling.

Cronin was awarded an honorary MBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 for services to animal welfare.

In 2006, Cronin was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II for services to animal welfare he was accompanied by Robert Pitts. Cronin has also received the Jane Goodall Award.

During 1987 Cronin returned to England and focused on how he could possibly build a sanctuary for the chimps. The Templers agreed to re-home the chimps at the sanctuary which Cronin promised to be able to build. Cronin recruited help from his best friend Jeremy Keeling, who was a fellow zoo keeper, and the pair set out to achieve their ambition of a primate sanctuary. Cronin was notified about an abandoned pig farm located near Wool, Dorset. The old land covered 65 acres and would be perfect for what would become a primate rescue centre.

In July 1987, Cronin was able to bring the first group of nine chimps from the Templers' half-way house to Monkey World. Once at the park, the chimpanzees were rehabilitated and housed in their new accommodations. Also within the park was one hand-reared female Bornean orang-utan named Amy, who was brought by Jeremy Keeling, whose job it was to look after the animals at the centre. There was the arrival of some Barbary macaques, pig-tailed macaques and some ring-tailed lemurs, which made up the rest of the collection of primates housed in Cronin's rescue centre. More chimpanzees from Spain arrived at the park.

Cronin opened Monkey World on 7 August 1987, providing the public with a rare opportunity to observe exotic primates. He made the sanctuary a rescue centre and not a zoo. The female chimpanzees were put on birth control to save space for more individuals needing rescuing. Monkey World did not only rescue Spanish beach chimps, but chimps from a variety of circumstances such as exotic pets, circus entertainers and medical research laboratory subjects. In 1993, Cronin met Alison Ames, an authority on animal behaviour and Cambridge graduate in biological anthropology. She and Cronin were married in 1996, from then on running Monkey World as a combined venture.

Cronin started his work with primates through working as a zoo keeper in various zoos. In 1980 he came to Britain where he acquired a job as a zoo keeper at John Aspinall's zoo at Howletts, where he perfected his skills of primate rehabilitation and care. John Aspinall had set up a breeding programme for gorillas which were an endangered species. Cronin's passion for working with primates made him quite successful in his career and encouraged him to have an ambition of one day building a safe haven for mistreated primates. During his years working at John Aspinall's Zoo, he gave himself the necessary experience of dealing with apes on a daily basis in his career path of working with them as well as small monkeys and their complex life necessities.

In the middle 1980s Spain had released legislation that forbade the use of chimpanzees as photographer's props, and this turn of action gave Cronin some optimism on how he would reach his goal of helping the chimps. In 1986 Cronin approached a British couple called Simon and Peggy Templer who had started rescuing the beach chimps in 1978. Cronin worked together with the Templers who had set up a half-way house where the confiscated chimps were being housed. The chimps would not be able to stay there for long, and it was Cronin's idea that shed light. Cronin requested discussions on how he could possibly help and with the assistance of the Spanish authorities (the Guardia Civil) confiscating the chimps, there would certainly be more individuals arriving at the small half-way house.

Cronin was born in Yonkers, New York, to Italian-Irish parents. The son of a union official, he was educated at St Denis School and Lincoln High School. He had a number of jobs after leaving school before becoming a keeper at Bronx Zoo in the 1970s. While working there he realised he wanted to work with animals. In 1980 he moved to Kent in the UK to work in John Aspinall's zoo.

James Michael Cronin, MBE (15 November 1951 – 17 March 2007) was the American co-founder in 1987 of Monkey World in Dorset, England, a sanctuary for abused and neglected primates. He was widely acknowledged as an international expert in the rescue and rehabilitation of abused primates, and in the enforcement of international treaties aimed at protecting them from illegal trade and experimentation.