“For the past 25 years of my life, I have lived in and explored some of the most remote places on earth. I have lived for days in caves chasing bats, I have captured and tracked bears, jaguars, leopards, tigers, and rhinos. I have discovered new animal species in northern Burma and in the cloud forests of the Annamite Mountains. I have documented lost cultures such as the Taron, the world’s only Mongoloid pygmies. I have been called the ‘Indiana Jones of Wildlife’ by Time magazine and given lectures all over the world to thousands of people. Yet not a year has passed, not a country traveled in, when I have not felt again the little stuttering, insecure boy inside who’d come home from school and hide in a corner of his closet. That boy is never far from the surface.”
Both the worldwide stuttering and animal conservation communities have lost a tireless advocate, Dr. Alan Rabinowitz, who at age 64 passed away on August 5 at a Manhattan hospital after a lengthy battle with leukemia. A longtime board member, spokesperson and dear friend of the Stuttering Foundation, Alan was primarily known for being an renowned animal conservationist. He served as the CEO and Chief Scientist of Panthera, a U.S-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the world’s 40 wild cat species. His high-profile career brought him not only to all corners of the globe, but also into the top media outlets throughout the world.
A severe stutterer, Alan was placed in a special classroom in his elementary school. While he struggled to speak with teachers and peers, he found an outlet in fluency while speaking to animals. Realizing his son’s gift for fluency with animals, Alan’s father regularly brought him to visit the Bronx Zoo.
In speaking to the jungle
cats in their cages, Alan remembers making them a promise: if ever he was able to overcome his stuttering, he would use his voice to fight for them. No matter where he was in the world, Dr. Rabinowitz fulfilled his promise by using his platform to speak on behalf of the animals, often recounting the powerful personal testimony of his own childhood stuttering.
“Alan’s courage is particularly inspiring to young people whose career paths have yet to be decided and for whom stuttering often seems an insurmountable obstacle,” said Stuttering Foundation president, Jane Fraser. “Through hard work, perseverance and dedication to his true passions, Alan never let stuttering hold him back from his quest to help endangered animals.” Alan told his inspiring story in a 2011 Stuttering Foundation DVD entitled Stuttering and the Big Cats, which has been widely used in public school speech therapy programs. In addition, Dr. Rabinowitz was the
author of seven books on
wildlife conservation, including the 2014 children's book A Boy and a Jaguar, which delightfully illustrates the story of his childhood promise at the Bronx Zoo.
In a prestigious career spanning three decades, Dr. Rabinowitz was, above all, a protector and global advocate for wild cats and other threatened wildlife, the diminishing lands in which they roam, and the often impoverished people living near these cats and other wildlife.
Among a lengthy seminal list, some of his crowning conservation achievements are the conceptualization and implementation of Panthera’s Jaguar Corridor Initiative, an unprecedented effort to connect and protect jaguars
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