Happy Nice Mall

William G. Conway, an animal conservationist who redefined (but failed to rename) the Bronx Zoo and helps transform America’s urban wildlife parks into crowd-pleasing natural habitats designed to build support for endangered species around the world. He died in New York in October. Rochelle, NY was 91 years old.

It was announced that he died in the hospital. Wildlife Conservation Societywhere he spent almost his entire career. Bird joined the association in 1956 as assistant curator and retired as president and general manager in 1999.

Dr. Conway resolutely transformed the Bronx from a run-down monastery famous for neurotic caged specimens to a collection of lush natural environments where animals likely feel more at home and visitors benefit from a more authentic educational experience. .

Under his supervision, the Bronx Zoo has opened the Children’s Zoo and exhibits such as World of Birds, JungleWorld, Baboon Sanctuary, and the 6.5-acre Congo Gorilla Forest.

“Today, the Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Park contains more examples of progressive zoo exhibit design than any other, almost all of which are based on William Conway’s concepts.” David Hancocks, architect and designer of zoos and nature centers, wrote in his book A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and the Uncertain Future (2002).

Conway’s use of English terms such as tweed suit and “cheerio” suggested that he came from the Midlands rather than the Midwest (born in St. Louis).

But New York officials were behind that facade in the 1980s, when the conservation association took responsibility from the city government to manage and renovate the impoverished municipal zoos in Central Park, Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and Corona Park in Flushing Meadows in New York. Flint discovered that he was a negotiator. New York Aquarium in Queens and Coney Island.

Dr. When Conway retired 43 years later, the society was involved in more than 300 conservation projects in 52 countries. In the previous decade, attendance at the city’s zoos and aquariums rose from 3.1 million to 4.4 million; the community’s budget more than doubled to $78 million; membership has tripled to nearly 95,000; and private fundraising doubled to $21 million.

Dr. Conway kindly named the animals after wealthy benefactors: Astor the elephant for the community’s head nurse. brooke astor; 11 giraffes for the coal tycoon James Walter Carter. When asked in 1999 whether only oligarchs had naming rights, New York Times“I admit that there is a pair of baboons named after me and my wife at JungleWorld.”

Jim Breheny, director of the Bronx Zoo, said Dr. “It redefined what zoos and aquariums should be and how they should work,” Conway said posthumously. From the Zoological Society, Dr. Conway focused on “care, ethics, integrity and conservation”, including the exchange of animals between zoos to increase the possibility of breeding and genetic diversity.

One metric that hasn’t increased in New York’s zoos is the number of elephants now down to two in the Bronx. (When one gave birth In 1981, a 180-pound bull-calf, Dr. Conway proudly states, “The first elephant born in the New York area after nearly 9,500 years, though I think it was a mammoth.”)

In 2006, after several elephants at the zoo died from illness or injury, Mr. Breheny announced that no more would be taken. (Dr. Conway said that flamingos and penguins are his favorite animals.) Instead, the community has dedicated its resources to protecting them in the wild.

Dr. “The rationale for removing an animal from the wild for display must be judged by the value of this exhibit in terms of human education and appreciation, and the relevance and effectiveness of the exhibit in Turkey,” Conway said in an early report. for the satisfaction and continued well-being of every wild creature. ”

In recent years, the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal rights organization, has pursued a habeas corpus case to rescue a female named Happy, one of two elephants still found in the Bronx, on the grounds that she was absent.

Dr. While Conway was lauded by his colleagues as an environmentalist, he infuriated the public when he stepped into another field: semantics.

In 1993, he changed the word “zoo” (which he said evoked too much confusion and confusion) and renamed the famous institution in the Bronx to the International Wildlife Conservation Park (formally the New York Zoological Park).

The name change prompted Daniel Berger to write. Baltimore Sun“Endangered species cry out for protection like language.” In the On Language column New York Times MagazineWilliam Safire responded more concisely by offering a proverbial “Bronx cheer.”

Eventually, showing that language and logic set humans apart from other animals, authorities kept the name “Bronx Zoo” on a smaller sign as “Bronx Wildlife Conservation Park.”

Dr. “One in 10 voters in the United States live within 80 miles of this zoo, and most will never see any wildlife other than starlings, pigeons, cockroaches and mice,” Conway said. Times in 1972. “We want to convince the townspeople that wildlife is worth protecting.”

Dr. Conway wasn’t praised for his sense of humor, but he wasn’t routinely laughing, either. In 1968 he wrote an article titled “How to Exhibit a Frog: A Bed-Time Story for Zoo Guys.” He once described architects as the most dangerous animals in captivity.

In 1962, he starred on the CBS-TV show “To Tell the Truth” with two crooks who claimed to be the youngest manager of any zoo in the United States. Actress and journalist Betty Furness he was the only panelist to guess that he was the real William Conway.

He published a book in 1982. sad lettersupposedly written by a chimpanzee, he concluded: “I became aware of the fact that not all humans are insensitive to the need to find substitutes for apes and apes as experimental animals. A colleague of mine recently came to my attention in a speech by the dean of a prominent Eastern medical school, in part, ‘ Those who will enter the field of medical science should prepare themselves for sacrifice.’”

William Gaylord Conway was born on November 20, 1929 in St. Louis to Frederick and Alice (Gaylord) Conway. His father was an artist.

When Bill was 4 years old, he started to set up a personal zoo by collecting butterflies, which he gifted to elementary school after graduation. As a teenager, St. He volunteered at the St. Louis Zoo.

In 1951 St. After earning a degree in zoology from Washington University in St. Louis Zoo and helped found the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs before moving to the Bronx Zoo’s grounds with his wife, Christa Berthoud. a wildlife photographer. Dr. They lived there for a time with a parrot named Jimmy, who, Conway says, “has an absolutely wonderful disreputable vocabulary.” They later moved to New Rochelle.

His wife is the only survivor.

In 1961, at the age of 32, Mr. Conway became director of the Bronx Zoo. Five years later, he became executive director of the Zoological Society of New York, as the Wildlife Conservation Society was known at the time. He was appointed president of the association in 1992.

He said he was leaving in 1999 because he told the association’s president that 70 seemed like an appropriate retirement age. He said “I made a terrible mistake” Times. “I should have said 95.”

Alex Traub contributing reporting.