KEENESBURG — Pat Craig started the Rocky Mountain Wildlife Conservation Center in 1980, and for more than 20 years, only he and a handful of people he trusted ever got to see the growing number of tigers, lions and bears romp in their homes.
It wasn’t that the public didn’t want to see the big cats, bears or, later on, wolves. Craig didn’t want them there. He didn’t run a zoo.
He started the center to provide a place for animals that were kept in garages, neglected in tiny cages as truck-stop attractions or outright abused. He railed about the captive wildlife crisis and the tens of thousands of people keeping tigers or other wild animals as “pets” in the United States. People were the problem.
After his Keenesburg facility nearly closed in 2006 because he couldn’t pay the bills, he changed his mind.
