When the chimpanzees see Ron Magill, they go wild.
“Whoo, whoo, whoo,” Magill calls out in greeting to Samantha, Bubbles, Hondo and Niger as he walks toward their yard at Zoo Miami.
“Whoo, whoo whoo,” they respond, scooting on feet and knuckles toward the moat that separates them from Magill. Hondo waves. Bubbles claps.
They recognize their 6-foot-6 pal immediately. He’s not a member of the troop, but it’s easy to envision Magill inside their playground, swinging on the ropes, climbing trees, chasing them across the grass in a game of tag.
He tosses apple chunks to the four chimps. They catch the fruit and stuff it in their mouths.
“Give me a smile, Bubs,” he says, and she bares a large set of yellowed teeth. He lobs another apple that Niger snatches away from Hondo. “Wow, did you see that interception? The Dolphins need you, Niger!”
Samantha lets out a high-pitched cackle.
“OK, Sammy, I know, but you’ve got a lot of apple, chew it, swallow it,” Magill says. “Good girl, good girl.”
“Chimpanzees are our closest cousins, phenomenal intelligence, very vocal mammals. And Niger is the marvelous alpha chimp of this misfit group,” Magill says, teaching as he’s talking, imparting snippets of his encyclopedic knowledge. Ask him about any species on Planet Earth and he will tell you about their behavior, diet and mating habits while slipping into an impersonation of the noises they make.
The chimps grow louder in their excitement, panting, hooting and screeching. Magill gets louder, too, panting, hooting and screeching. The conversation becomes convoluted. Soon, looking back and forth from man to chimp, it’s hard to tell who is saying what. They are all speaking the same language.
Magill’s job title is communications director for Zoo Miami, which turns 40 years old in December, the fifth largest zoo in the United States with 3,000 animals on 740 acres. But “spokesman” doesn’t begin to describe Magill, 61, who started his career in 1980 shoveling poop out of cages at the old Crandon Park Zoo.
Magill is Miami’s Dr. Doolittle. Over the decades, he’s become much more than a wildlife expert. He’s an animal advocate, prize-winning photographer, Emmy-winning TV and radio star, founder of his namesake conservation organization, the tallest Cuban in Miami (according to his friends) and one of South Florida’s most recognizable and beloved personalities. He’s an international celebrity.
They know him in Africa. He’s made 53 trips to the continent to study and photograph elephants, lions, cheetahs, giraffes, zebras. They know him in South America, where he’s helping fund a jaguar-tracking project.
They know him in a remote village in Panama, home to the indigenous people of the Embera tribe. He traveled there as part of his endeavor to save the endangered harpy eagle and win designation for it as the national bird.
“We had to paddle a dugout canoe for hours into a dense forest where we met the village chief, a guy with a loincloth, I kid you not, and he takes one look at me and says, ‘Ron Magill,’” Magill said.
The chief recognized Magill from his appearances on the popular TV show “Sabado Gigante.”
“He had a TV hooked up to a car battery and a satellite dish,” Magill said. “Don Francisco always told me his show would enable me to reach an extremely wide audience.”
They know him in Cuba. He took his mother to the island for her 85th birthday. She is a New Yorker but always wanted to visit her late husband’s home country. He heard his name called out by security guards when he arrived at the Havana airport, by people waving at him from balconies, from police officers along the Malecon.
“Hron Mageel!” Magill said with a Cuban accent. “Hola! Bienvenidos! It was amazing!”
And they know him at Zoo Miami, where he’s stopped every 10 seconds when he makes his daily rounds. People ask for autographs, handshakes, hugs. They ask for pictures, and Magill smiles and instinctively bends to fit into the frame. He remembers names and connections, as if he’s the mayor of a small town. One woman who asked him to pose with her 6-year-old daughter recounted how Magill had visited her kindergarten class with a red-tailed hawk 25 years ago.
Lots of people are animal lovers or horse whisperers. But Magill possesses a deeper level of affinity. He would love to be one of the creatures he sees in the wild or feeds at the zoo. He would gladly trade places with an orangutan or elephant or eagle or python. And that is why his passion infects everyone he meets.
The wonder never wanes.
“My vocation is my avocation,” he said. “I get paid to do what people pay to do. Can you believe that? I’m so thankful for each day.”
Inside Magill’s office, which is decorated with animal skulls, mementos from his travels, framed news articles and award plaques, one wall is covered with photos of celebrities, politicians, and members of the media. There’s Sir David Attenborough, the British documentary maker, author and naturalist whom Magill speaks of in reverential tones as his hero. He was selected to present Attenborough with the Audubon Medal — “a profound honor. I actually cried during the ceremony.” There’s Jim Fowler, Magill’s idol and one of his mentors. As a kid, Magill never missed an episode of Fowler hosting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” and dreamed of doing the same thing. There’s Dan LeBatard. Magill is a regular on his radio program and podcast. There’s Don Johnson. Magill was an animal handler for “Miami Vice.”
“Remember Elvis the alligator?” he asked. “We had five Elvises.”
There’s Christina Aguilera and Michael Jackson. Magill once led Jackson, his three children and one bodyguard on a hush-hush, after-hours private tour of the zoo. Although Magill was taken aback by Jackson’s waxworks appearance (a piece of plastic was poking out of his nose), gray skin and what he’s sure was a wig, he was fascinated by Jackson’s mannerism of clucking a beat under his breath while snapping his fingers and tapping his feet. The kids were exceptionally polite and Magill was moved to see the joy Jackson derived from spending time alone with them. His favorite stop was at the chimpanzee enclosure. Jackson raved about Magill’s kindness, and a couple years later, Magill received an invitation to Jackson’s funeral.
Forty-one years is a long time in a job. Magill started working for Miami-Dade County at Crandon Park Zoo in Key Biscayne. He had seen a sign advertising construction of the new MIami Metrozoo near his family’s home in the Redland and decided he had to work there. He figured an entry-level job at Crandon was his steppingstone so he dropped out of the University of Florida before his senior year to become a zookeeper for a salary of $9,900.
He was part of the transition team. He’s got a photo of a giraffe in a truck heading south on U.S. 1, ducking his head under a traffic light.
“It was like Noah’s ark,” he said.
Pushing for better zoos
Magill looks back on his early days with feelings of shame. Crandon was the epitome of the antiquated zoo, where animals, captured in their natural habitats, were ogled in cramped cells.
“The chimps would throw water and feces at us, shoot us the bird,” Magill said. “I’d take babies on TV to drum up publicity even though that was not in the best interest of the animal.”
While Metrozoo was a spacious, innovative place, one of the first “cageless” zoos, Magill’s initial roles as reptile handler, senior zookeeper and assistant curator included hosting wild animal shows in the amphitheater, which he regrets.
“I don’t believe in ripping animals out of the wild and putting them on display,” Magill said. “Zoos’ No. 1 priority must be ensuring that animals can live in the wild, not exhibiting them. Zoos, including ours, must allocate more money to conservation. We’re doing better but the bar is high.”
Magill is a fierce advocate for the evolution of the American zoo from exploitative showcase to conservation institution. Animal rights activists don’t see much difference between zoos and “Tiger King” roadside attractions or marine theme parks like Seaquarium, where Lolita the killer whale has lived in a 20-foot deep tank and performed her act for 50 years. What Magill calls the “anti-zoo movement” argues that the zoo, like the circus, is a relic of the past and should be closed.
“Zoos face a challenge if they want to validate their existence,” Magill said. “When I started here we were surrounded by a rare rock pineland that has since been strip-malled, right next to us. How hypocritical a picture is that?
“We’ve got to champion protection of animals in their natural habitat before it’s too late. A United Nations report states that in the next 50 years we could lose 1 million species of animals. We are living in the middle of the anthropocene era, the most significant mass extinction period since the dinosaurs.
“If zoos are the last place on earth where people can see wild animals, we’ve failed.”
Magill is not afraid to be critical. When he was appointed spokesman he insisted on transparency, putting out press releases on animal births and deaths, including recent ones of Kumang the orangutan who likely suffered a blood clot after two teeth were extracted, and Gizmo the meerkat, who died in a tunnel collapse.
“I did an announcement on a tiger who died of cancer, even though I knew people would blame the zoo for the cancer,” he said. “This is not Disneyland. This is a real place, and the community needs to see the ups and downs.”
Magill believes zoos serve a vital purpose: They convert visitors into conservationists. They foster awareness of shrinking habitats. They plant a seed, as the Bronx Zoo did for him as a boy, that grows into fascination and respect for animals.
“In a perfect world we wouldn’t have zoos,” he said, talking faster, volume rising. “We’d all go on safari in Africa and see elephants, go to the Amazon and see jaguars, go to the Arctic and see polar bears. Zoos give us that window on the wild world to inspire people.”
Funding conservation and science
Frustrated by the pace of zoos’ investment in conservation, Magill created his own foundation six years ago. Magill has since raised millions for the Ron Magill Conservation Endowment in support of projects in Florida, Africa, Asia and Central and South America. The endowment has paid for research on hummingbirds, jeeps in Kenya, an ATV at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, radio collars in Brazil, an elephant orphanage in South Africa, care of koalas injured in bush fires in Australia, bird rescue equipment in Miami and scholarships for students.
“If I had not established my endowment I would have left the zoo because I wouldn’t be able to justify what I do here,” said Magill, who said his salary is $119,000 a year. “Be the change you want to see. I want to leave a legacy that will continue to protect animals after I’m gone.”
When Magill enters the giant tortoise enclosure, Goliath lifts his head, elevates his shell and lumbers toward Magill as fast as a 500-pound tortoise can lumber.
“Here’s Ron, hi Ron. He knows me,” Magill says. “Goliath is from the Galapagos Islands. He’s estimated to be 100 years old and can live to 150.”
Magill crouches next to Goliath and scratches his leathery neck. He explains how, in the islands, a finch eats ticks off the body of a tortoise — a symbiotic relationship
Goliath seems to have been lulled to sleep by Magill’s touch. He’s as still as a statue.
“He’s in his relaxed trance. Oh, that feels so good,” Magill says, pulling apple slices out of a plastic bag. “OK, grandpa, open up for your apple. I’m not going to scratch anymore.”
Magill holds the apple slice by Goliath’s nose for a minute, two, three. Tortoises even eat in slow motion.
“Come on, buddy. Smell the apple,” he says and Goliath opens wide, sticks out his tongue on which Magill places the apple, retracts it and crushes the apple between his jaws. Apple juice squirts onto Magill’s shirt.
“He’s got the face of E.T., doesn’t he?” Magill says. “Tortoises don’t generally make noise except when courting or breeding and that’s a deep, guttural uh, uh, uh grunt he emits in short bursts when mounting the female and then an extended moan — uhhhhhh.”
Tortoise sex. Is there anything Magill has not seen or heard?
He feeds Goliath again. Crunch, squirt.
“And this is my job, ladies and gentlemen! How can you even call it a job?”
Wild wonders everywhere
Later on that hot day, Magill is filmed by a FOX TV cameraman with Penelope the sloth. Penelope is one of a handful of animals Magill relies upon for presentations because she is docile, cooperative — and a ham.
“She came to us as an orphan from Panama,” Magill says. “The slowest land mammal, sloths move only six feet per minute, although they are excellent swimmers. They are so motionless that algae grows on their coat and a moth inhabits their fur. They live in trees and come down once a week to go the bathroom. They are mostly silent; babies make bleating sounds. They do not make good pets, so don’t even think about it.”
The sloth is hanging from Magill’s neck. It looks like she’s hugging him. He feeds her a hibiscus flower, then a green bean.
“Look at her eating with her fingers! This is magic!” he says. “Look at her cute face, a permanent grin!”
Penelope licks Magill’s cheek.
“I’m feeling a lot of love,” he says.
The wonder, the wonder.
Next, Magill checks in on the elephants. He is closest to Dalip, 55, the oldest Asian bull elephant in North America and one of only two remaining animals who moved to Zoo Miami from Crandon (the other is a 47-year-old black neck stork). His enormous tusks nearly scrape the ground.
“Dalip is very wise,” Magill says. “He has been a mentor to the other elephants.”
When Magill goes to Africa, one of his favorite photography subjects is the elephant.
“Elephants are incredible, smart communicators. They make a myriad of sounds, including subsonic sounds we can’t hear but they can from miles away. I’ve been near a herd and can’t hear anything but feel a rumble in my chest,” Magill says, mimicking a low growl.
“And they make the classic, powerful, trumpeting roar,” he says, breaking into a high-pitched wail. He sounds like he’s singing a Prince riff.
“Elephants are a controversial exhibit at zoos,” he says. “Most animals live beyond their lifespan at zoos, but not elephants. In the wild they need so much habitat to roam. Fortunately here we’ve got a lot of acreage.”
Losing old friends
Magill, the walking exclamation mark, the sun that never sets, turns melancholy when he reflects on the old-timers who have died.
If you didn’t know he was referring to animals, he could be talking about close friends whom he misses dearly.
“Toshi the black rhino, I unloaded him when he arrived from Hiroshima, Japan, as a youngster, and he died of old age at 43,” Magill said. “He was the finest, gentlest rhino. He’d eat a carrot out of my mouth. He was a great ambassador. I’d bring all the Make-A-Wish kids to meet Toshi. He’d let them pet the side of his face. When he passed I cried a lot.”
He’s still mourning the loss of Pongo the giraffe and J.J. the gorilla.
Magill can recite the lifespan of any species. But what is the lifespan of a male human? When the zoo loses a senior citizen, Magill feels old.
“I’ve known Dalip for 41 years. Samantha (the chimp) is 52 and one time when she was sick and depressed the vets said, ‘Get Ron.’ When she heard my voice, she opened her eyes and we greeted each other — whoo, whoo — and she was happy again. When the last of them goes, it will be my cue to go, too.”
After all these years, shouldn’t Magill have developed a clinical attitude?
“Listen, I cry at Publix commercials,” he said. “I’m a sucker for tearjerkers.”
His 14-year-old pet Schnauzer, Watson, died four years ago. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to get another dog.
“I asked the vet to come to our house to put him to sleep,” Magill said, tears welling. “I held Watson and he looked at me as if he was saying, ‘It’s OK, Ron.’ That was so hard on me.
“I’ve never gotten cynical about nature. I never get tired of going out to see the animals. Building a bond with them is rewarding. It’s people I can lose patience with.”
An early bird at the zoo
At 7 a.m., Magill is perched at one of his favorite spots, the bench overlooking the tiger temple. He wants a photo of Ndari the Sumatran tiger cub with his mother Leeloo.
He starts his workday at 6:30 a.m. so he can observe the animals when they’re active in the morning, before the zoo opens. The quiet is broken by gibbons calling in the background — an operatic cry followed by wop, wop, wop.
“See, the cub will come out but the mom is shy and skittish, an apprehensive tigress,” he says, snapping a few photos. “The cub is bold now, see how he’s exploring. Mom will come out to defecate and urinate and then she’ll go back inside. Just wait.”
He’s learned their routine through patient observation. On a day off he once sat on the bench for five hours.
“I wish our zoo guests would take the time to watch,” he says. “People are into instant gratification, tapping their phones. They don’t comprehend the beauty. A swamp seems boring but it is an intricate web of life that will blow your mind if you take the time to watch.”
Leeloo emerges from the temple doorway, sauntering like a runway model.
“She’s urinating right there!” Magill exclaims. “Ndari is sniffing it! That’s called flehming. They have an organ, the Jacobson’s organ, in the roof of their mouth like a computer that analyzes scents. Snakes use their tongue to collect smells. Scents are a calling card. Did you know that cats have scent glands in their toes and birds have scent glands in their feathers? I use the same soap and aftershave every day so the animals get used to it.”
Ndari jumps on his mother’s tail, nips at her ankles. Snap, snap, snap goes the camera. Magill is an accomplished photographer, a Nikon Ambassador who speaks at trade shows and conducts clinics.
“I’ve learned how important visuals are as a tool to storytelling,” he said. “That’s what I am, a storyteller.”
Magill shows a digital image of Ndari pawing Leeloo’s snout.
“Look at this marvelous little face of curiosity,” he says. “If you’re willing to wait the mysteries of nature will open up.”
An awkward nerd raising vipers
Magill grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens. His mother took him on regular excursions to the Museum of Natural History and the Bronx Zoo, where he liked the bisons and big cats.
His first pet was Skippy, an Irish setter. He had an aquarium. He fed squirrels.
When Magill was 12 years old, the family moved to five acres in the Redland, into a house built by his father, a gregarious carpenter with “a laugh you could hear around the block,” Magill said. “His dream was to grow and sell fruit — mangoes, avocados, lychees — but he wound up giving it all away.”
His mother, who still lives in the house and swims in the pool daily, is also “a glass-half-full person and my biggest fan, even when I doubted myself,” Magill said.
As a teen, Magill rehabbed an injured barn owl in the laundry room. He bred Gaboon vipers and sold the babies for $300.
“They have two-inch fangs and make an eerie noise,” he said, exhaling slowly through his lips. “Sounds like a demon from hell, doesn’t it?”
In the barn where they had kept two horses, Magill raised a colony of flesh-eating dermestid beetles to clean the skulls of roadkill he brought home. He dried the skulls under a heat lamp and put them into a box with the beetles.
“They eat all the tissue and crawl into the cracks and crevices without damaging sensitive areas like the nasal turbinate bones,” Magill explained. “They are the piranhas of the insect world.”
He worked summers at the Serpentarium as reptile keeper and tour guide. Its founder, Bill Haast, taught him how to read snakes. He has a photo of Haast with a king cobra from his famous act, for which his wife Clarita provided suspenseful commentary: “Watch, watch, watchwatchwatch...” as Haast grabbed the cobra in a split second and milked its fangs for venom.
“This was just before he got bit and ended up in an iron lung,” Magill said. “He was bit over 160 times.”
At Palmetto High School, Magill was a tall and awkward nerd, nicknamed Lurch and Frankenstein. Basketball coach Jay Bouton plucked him from the hallway, and spent two hours each afternoon molding him into a player.
“I couldn’t even dribble and tripped over myself during layup drills,” Magill said. “I was the laughingstock of the group trying out.”
But Bouton told Magill he had something that could not be taught: Height. Magill became starting center on one of the top teams in the district. Once dunking was legalized in high school games, Magill perfected a 360-degree slam.
“Coach Bouton changed my life and showed me what you can accomplish with hard work and someone who believes in you,” said Magill, who plays every Saturday with a group of friends.
At the University of Florida, Magill owned a pet ball python named Monty. His goal was to become a veterinarian “until I took my first chemistry class and realized I needed to revert to Plan B.” He was an animal science major.
He was chosen for a Distinguished Alumni Award last year even though he never graduated, praised by the UF president for doing work “worth several degrees.”
The Zoo voice at tough times
Magill was appointed spokesman at age 31 and a year later, in 1992, the zoo faced its greatest crisis. Hurricane Andrew wrecked the zoo. There was talk it would never reopen.
As Andrew approached, the staff scrambled to find safe places for the animals. The flamingos were sheltered in a restroom.
“I went in the next morning and there were bloodied monkeys from the nearby primate research center walking down the road,” said Magill, who was photographed cradling a baby antelope that had been born during the storm and abandoned by its mother. “The monorail looked like a twisted coat hanger. The aviary was destroyed. The place was unrecognizable. The twilight zone. We lost 100 birds but only five mammals. We needed a lot of support and donations to reopen and we did four months later.”
Tragedy struck in 1994, when zookeeper David Marshall was mauled to death by a white tiger.
“I decided we would let the media in and not hide anything. I made the announcement and lost it,” Magill recalled. “The director wanted to fire me but Mayor [Alex] Penelas saved my job.”
Since then the zoo has steadily expanded and set a record this month, when it surpassed one million visitors for the year.
Magill is a major reason Zoo Miami is known as one of the best in the country, said former county manager Merrett Stierheim.
“Ron is a giant in his field who is making a lasting difference with his conservation endowment,” Stierheim said. “Used to be when something upset him he’d fire off a blistering memo, because he’s so passionate. We had some head-knocking sessions. If he learned anything from me, it was to be diplomatic.”
Croc bite spurs romance
It was due to another accident at the zoo that Magill met his wife. He got bit through the hand by a crocodile and needed surgery. His physical therapist was Rita Nickels.
“She walked in wearing scrubs and I was smitten,” he said. “She had to massage my hand and it was kind of an intimate thing.”
She’d seen him on TV and he offered to give her a zoo tour.
“I was not particularly interested in the zoo but halfway through the tour I knew I wanted to marry Ron,” Rita said. “He was so enthusiastic about sharing his knowledge. But then, how do I tell my mom I’m in love with a zookeeper? He was just electric. And I fall in love with this man all over again every day.”
Rita was nine months pregnant when Hurricane Andrew bore down on their Kendall house but she decided not to go to a hospital. She was confident if the baby came that Ron could deliver him.
They have two kids, Sean, 28, a videographer for the Rick Murphy fishing show, and Alexis, 25, a teacher in Spain, who Facetimed Magill on a recent afternoon as she approached a black cow in a field outside Madrid, asking, “Dad, can I touch that cow?” She had pounced on an opportunity to rile her father.
“No, no, no, he will gore you and you’ll be hours from a hospital and you’ll bleed to death,” he responded.
Rita was reluctant to take her first trip to Africa.
“I was not into the outdoors. The only pet I had was a hamster. How would I blow dry my hair on safari?” she said. “But once you go, Africa gets into your soul.”
They enjoy going to the Everglades, the Keys, Black Point. She accompanies him to countless fundraising events.
“Rita more than me is a people person,” Magill said. “I’m dull. Rita gets asked if I’m that animated at home. Thank God, no. I like to lie on the couch, unwind, watch Netflix.”
The first thing you see when you walk into Magill’s modest home is a 14-foot cobra skeleton. Sit on the living room sofa and you can’t miss the end tables, large rhinoceros and hippopotamus skulls with glass panes atop them.
He’s got skulls lining shelves, spilling from one room into the next. A lion skull, a tiger skull, wolf, walrus, water buffalo, kangaroo, baboon, giraffe, Thompson’s gazelle, polar bear, rattlesnake, snapping turtle, barracuda, alligator, bat, mole, shrew. He could open a museum.
“I’m a fanatic about bones,” he said. “You can learn so much by examining a skull. Everything you see here died naturally.”
His collection includes a 20-million-year-old fossilized rhino skull from the Badlands.
“What did he eat? What did this touch?” he said. “It’s art by nature.”
Here’s a juvenile woolly mammoth tooth, harpy eagle talons, a giant armadillo carapace, a fossilized dinosaur egg, display boxes of scorpions, cicadas, beetles.
“My prized piece: The skull of an extinct cave bear preserved in a bog in Russia,” Magill said. “He’s got perfect teeth, 20,000 years later.”
Turns out Magill loves all animals, dead or alive.
‘Tarzan with a very soft underbelly’
Magill sweeps into the studio of the Dan LeBatard Show With Stugotz at the Clevelander Hotel accompanied by a Eurasian eagle owl named Phantom, a 14-foot, 100-pound Burmese albino python, a Bufo toad and a Cuban tree frog.
It’s a special occasion, a 24-hour marathon to launch LeBatard’s new podcast, so Magill, one of LeBatard’s most popular guests, brought along the quartet from the zoo. He was asked to bring the amphibians to annoy co-host Stugotz, who has a phobia of those creatures.
Everybody on set is already punchy when Magill lifts Phantom out of his kennel and onto his forearm. He provides commentary on owls’ acute hearing and Phantom suddenly flaps his large wings as LeBatard and Stugotz recoil.
“Oh, my God, it’s a bird,” Stugotz says. “We’re having a real hoot. Is he going to peck my eyes out?”
Next, Magill pulls out the python and, breathing hard under its weight, wrestles the lemon-colored snake onto his shoulders.
“They are not venomous, they kill by constriction and they will continue to wreak havoc on the Everglades until a natural pathogen kills them off,” Magill says.
After putting the python away, Magill holds the petite frog aloft in one hand and the poisonous Bufo toad in the other. The production crew is startled and amused. All hell breaks loose.
“Ron has animals that make me nervous,” Stugotz says with a wide-eyed look of horror. “Dan, I think I’m having a heart attack.”
He yanks off his headphones and sprints out of the studio. Raucous laughter.
“Stugotz has bailed,” LeBatard announces.
The rest of the team has gathered before Magill, listening intently as he imitates the frog: “Mmmmrah, mmmmrah.”
“See the Bufo toad, also called a Cane toad, puffing himself up to look more intimidating. Beware the toxic secretions from their glands. A Bufo can kill your dog. If you see a dog foaming at the mouth and regurgitating, get a hose in their mouth and get them to the vet,” Magill says, making tortured gagging noises.
In the meantime, LeBatard is running a robust live auction for Magill’s photo of the tiger cub, with proceeds going to Magill’s foundation. The bids move up to $7,000.
The show introduced Magill to a national audience. Combined with his role as wildlife consultant for Good Morning America, ABC, CNN, Telemundo, Univision and CNBC, he’s famous, “the Hispanic Joan Embery,” he jokes. He’s also host of “Mundo Salvaje” on HITN, a Spanish-language public broadcasting network.
Yet he is as humble as ever, dedicated to spreading his message, LeBatard says.
“Ron is authentically childlike. His passion for animals cannot be feigned,” he says. “He’s Tarzan with a very soft underbelly.”
Magill had hoped to quell Stugotz’s fear by personally introducing him to frog and toad. Part of his mission is to help people connect with animals.
“The biggest misconception is that animals are very different from people,” he says. “I’ve watched horses interact with children in therapy and dolphins interact with disabled children and the animals seem to know to take special care. Likewise we should try to understand them. Watch the signals they send with their body language. Listen to their language, like the songs of the humpback whales that carry across oceans.”
The reason he created his “Sex With the Animals” presentation at the zoo was to show that humans and animals have much in common, even their most basic instincts.
“We have to learn to coexist and the healthier the planet will be,” he says. “Stop buying palm oil products and destroying the orangutans’ habitat. It’s all connected.”
Magill always speaks forcefully, but on this subject he seems intensely earnest. His legacy has taken on urgency. Mortality is much on his mind.
“Earth is resilient but humans will become extinct,” he says, and maybe someday his bones will be the collector’s items of the species that replaces us.
“Whether it is bees or bugs, every species is inextricably linked to humans,” he says. “Saving bats saves our crops and saves us. We are in effect protecting ourselves.
“But we are such a blip, a sliver of a blip. We’re like the mayfly.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 7:00 AM.
