Alison Cronin

Alison Lorraine Cronin, MBE (born September 1966) is the director of Monkey World in Dorset, England, a place of refuge for primates that have been treated badly and not taken care of properly, from the United States. She is widely accepted to be an international expert in rescuing and rehabilitating such primates, and enforcing international treaties aimed at protecting them from illegal trade and experimentation.

Alison Cronin and her husband got an MBE in 2006 for Services to Animal Welfare, as well as starting the Endangered Asian Species Trust.

Early life and career
Alison Cronin was born in September 1966 as Alison Lorraine Ames in San Diego, California. She studied biological anthropology at Cambridge University. She met Jim Cronin at Monkey World in 1993 while she was living in the UK. They married in 1996. They were joint directors of Monkey World. After her husband died, Cronin continued running the site and working against the illegal transportation of animals.

Alison Cronin became known through the television series Monkey Business, which was made by Meridian Broadcasting and shown on ITV Meridian in the UK and on Animal Planet worldwide, which has recorded the frequent rescue missions and undercover investigations all around Europe and Asia. The show began in 1998 with Monkey Business, which was then replaced with Monkey Life in 2007. It covers the low and high-profile rescues, one of the most dramatic being in January 2008 when Cronin led a huge rescue of 88 Capuchin monkeys from Chile.

In 2008, Alison Cronin led the creation of the Dao Tien Endangered Primate Rescue Centre located in Cát Tiên National Park, Southern Vietnam which is a rescue, rehabilitation, and release centre focusing on golden-cheeked gibbons, black-shanked douc langurs, silvered langurs, and pygmy loris. Alison Cronin has written on primates as well as fought to get legislation changed to protect the primates.

In 2018, Cronin was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford Brookes University for her work.

References

Other websites
Monkey World

Category:1966 births
Category:Naturalised citizens of the United Kingdom
Category:Members of the Order of the British Empire
Category:Living people