Park's founder a continuing influence

Spring fever seems to have come over the male European bison at Howletts Wild Animal Park. It bounds toward the white gate of its enclosure, trampling a bed of daffodils in its path before darting off in the direction of the next-door ruffed lemur house.

Watching over it all from his final resting place is John Aspinall, the founder of Howletts whose simple grave lies in the center of the park. By all accounts, Aspinall, who died at the age of 74 in 2000, was a larger than life character, a colorful, dynamic figure in the long tradition of the eccentric English gentleman.

With a fortune mostly made from gambling and casino operations, he used his winnings from betting on a horse race to buy the run-down manor home and grounds at Howletts in 1957. It was intended to house his own motley menagerie of animals, including a capuchin monkey, two bears and a tiger, but gradually grew along with his fortunes and his desire to save endangered large mammals such as the gorilla and tiger.

He acquired another manor house, Port Lympne, also in Kent, in the early 1970s to house the expanding collection, and was forced by rising maintenance costs to open the parks to the public later that decade.

Aspinall is sometimes compared to Gerald Durrell, the author and naturalist who set up the Jersey Wildlife Trust, based on his love of animals and their conservation. However, Aspinall had no formal zoological training, "and he used to say thank God I don't", remembers director of collections Peter Litchfield.

With an approach to conservation based on his passion for the animals, some of his methods, including close contact between keepers and animals such as gorillas and tigers, were unconventional.

Photos of Aspinall frolicking with a playful gorilla or wrestling with a tiger were met with skepticism by the established zoo community.

"John Aspinall was always willing to try different things, to go against the grain, but with focused management on what the animals need," said Litchfield. "His philosophy continues at Howletts today."

Aspinall's defenders point to the success of the breeding programs at Howletts, from the most prolific gorilla breeding community in the world, the birth of more than 400 Indian and Siberian tigers in 40 years as well as the first successful birth of an African elephant in an English zoo.

Critics counter with the notorious case of a female tiger who killed her keeper in 1980. To the consternation of England's rabid tabloid press, Aspinall argued the death was not the tiger's fault and refused to have her put down. When she killed another keeper several months later, he was forced to bow to public pressure and have the animal exterminated.

He also had to admit defeat with a Sumatran rhino breeding project in the mid-1980s. Both of the females brought to Howletts/Port Lympne at his expense proved either too sickly or old to breed, and the solitary male, Torgamba, was eventually returned to Way Kambas National Park in Sumatra.

Howletts and Port Lympne are now run by one of Aspinall's sons, Damian, with its annual operations heavily subsidized by the family trust.

-- Bruce Emond