Tickets are still available for the Echo-backed Unsung Hero awards.
The event at the Carrington House Hotel has been organised by Bournemouth 2026 and takes place on September 16. Guest speakers include Alison Cronin of Monkey World, Mayor of Bournemouth Cllr Stephen Chappell and Echo news editor Andy Martin.
The evening is a celebration of those individuals working tirelessly to make Bournemouth a safer, greener, healthier and more community-minded place to live.
Tickets include a three-course meal and drinks. Sponsors include JPMorgan, Dave Wells Properties and Transdev Yellow Buses.
A couple of Monkey World supporters are holding a little car boot sale near the entrance gates on Sunday 24 August 2008, to raise money for the Jim Cronin Memorial Fund and the monkeys.
IT was a dream he did not live to see come true, but the founder of Monkey World would have been justly proud of the centre’s latest achievement.
The wife of the late Jim Cronin, Dr Alison Cronin, has this week returned from Vietnam where, after six years of work, a 64-hectare rehabilitation centre for golden-cheeked gibbons rescued from the sickening smuggling trade has been opened.
Alison said: “All those years ago Jim turned to me when we saw the first illegal shipment of gibbons in Thailand and said We should do something about this’.”
Working with the Vietnamese authorities, a project began to establish a primate rescue centre in the south of the country, at Cat Tien National Park.
Monkey World – Ape Rescue Centre is celebrating the successful completion and opening of the Dao Tien Endangered Primate Species Centre. Known for assisting governments around the world to stop the smuggling of primates from the wild, this is Monkey World’s first insitu conservation project.
The Nam Cat Tien National Park in southern Dong Nai province on July 12 put into operation a wildlife rescue centre, specializing in primate.
The centre, covering 30 ha of land inside original forests on the Tien (Fairy) island, has been entrusted to step in when illegally-caged primates or primate trafficking are found.
It will also conduct research on rare primates’ habitat to farm rescued animals in the natural environment before freeing them into the forests.
A television star and her footballer boyfriend have adopted a chimpanzee called Bryan in Dorset, saving him from working as a beach photographer’s toothless prop in Mexico.
Gemma Atkinson, an actor in daytime soap Hollyoaks, and Darren Bent, who plays football for Wigan Athletic, adopted five-year-old Bryan after watching the primate’s plight on television.
ACTRESS Gemma Atkinson and footballer Marcus Bent paid a visit to Monkey World in Bovington to support its adoption campaign.
Former Hollyoaks star Gemma is famous for taking part in the ITV show I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here and will appear in the Brit-flick Boogie Woogie to be released in August.
She and her boyfriend Marcus, 30, a Wigan Athletic footballer, contacted Monkey World last month after seeing Monkey Life – the Channel Five soap opera about the lives of the apes at the primate rescue centre. The couple visited the centre to officially adopt Bryan, one of the stars of Monkey Life series two.
YEAR 2 pupils from Wool CE First School have been getting involved in some monkey business for their latest class project.
The children spent the day at nearby Monkey World as part of a project to help feed the primates at the centre.
The pupils brought with them giant papier maché nuts’ they had made themselves in class, which staff at the centre then filled with food for the monkeys.
The children got a close-up view as keeper Mike Colbourne and section head Lee Butler gave the nuts to the centre’s capuchin monkeys, which had recently been rescued from a laboratory in Chile.
They looked on as the monkeys ripped the nuts open to get at the treats inside, replicating skills that they would use to find food in the wild.
This video of Sally grooming Rodders was recorded by our own forum member, Kinglee.
Kinglee’s description:
Picture this, Sally and Rodders on quite a cold day in early March. It was just before Jeremy comes down to give the youngsters their tea so Sally was at the window watching and waiting. She must have thought that Rodders looked a bit scruffy to eat tea and, even though he was ‘playing’ with us through the window, she got hold of him quite firmly and began to groom him. Look at his little face – bless.
Baby Bart – BART the six month old chimp who is melting the hearts of Monkey World visitors.
Monkey Life -DR ALISON CRONIN of Monkey World talks to the Daily Echo about the new series of Monkey Life on Channel Five and the tribute programmes, Monkey Business Jim’s Legacy, which ITV will be showing later this year.