When Alan Rabinowitz was a boy, he struggled to speak. Stuttering made him feel invisible to the world, so he often retreated into the company of animals. In the Bronx Zoo, he found comfort whispering to the big cats through the bars, promising them that if he ever found his voice, he would use it to help protect them. It was a private vow, spoken in halting words only the animals heard.
Years later, Alan did find his voice—not perfectly fluent, but steady with conviction. Trained as a wildlife biologist, he embarked on journeys into some of the wildest corners of the earth. One of his earliest assignments led him deep into the forests of Belize, where jaguars still roamed but their future was uncertain. Farmers saw them as threats, hunters as trophies. The great cats were vanishing.
Alan began tracking jaguars through dense jungle, sometimes crawling on hands and knees through the underbrush, measuring paw prints pressed into mud, setting camera traps where human footsteps rarely tread. He spoke with villagers who feared the cats, trying to build trust. He negotiated with government officials, pressing for something that had never been attempted before: a protected sanctuary dedicated solely to jaguars.
In 1986, his persistence paid off. Belize established the Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary—the world’s first jaguar preserve. The cats that once teetered on the edge of survival had a stronghold, a place to breathe and roam free.
Alan’s work did not stop there. He went on to help create wildlife corridors in Asia, linking habitats across international borders so tigers, leopards, and clouded leopards could survive. He co-founded Panthera, an organization committed to protecting the world’s wild cats, carrying his childhood promise forward on a global scale.
In his lifetime, Alan often returned to the memory of that boy whispering through the bars of the Bronx Zoo. The animals he had once seen as prisoners had, in a way, freed him—giving his voice a purpose. His journey showed how fragile survival can be, and how miraculous a comeback becomes when one person’s determination meets the resilience of nature itself.
