TO THE RESCUE.

KRAFT, Jonathan; ANIMAL sanctuaries; PREDATORY animals; LIONS; TIGERS; ANIMAL welfare; NONPROFIT organizations

ARIZONAReport Available; UNITED StatesReport Available

There's a hint of the ballroom dancer about Jonathan Kraft as he glides into a cage with two large tigers, Natasha and Samantha. We're in the middle of nowhere, a flat stretch of Arizona desert, 33.5 barren acres in all, just over the Nevada state line, a 45-mile drive from Las Vegas. In this unpromising terrain, Kraft is carving out a refuge for more than a hundred exotic animals. At the sanctuary; known as Keepers of the Wild, most of his charges are abused or confiscated big cats and other large-mammal predators. Kraft sets to work scooping up droppings and raking the sand on the floor, a morning ritual. The only reason I haven't been killed or maimed is that I think one step ahead of them. Why do they trust me? I've never figured it out."Kraft was a Las Vegas entertainer when he started rescuing exotic animals nearly 15 years ago. "I was always great with animals," he says. "I just didn't know I was at my best with lions and tigers!" A trim dynamo of a man in his mid-50s, he grabs a morning cup of coffee and never stops talking-- to volunteers, to the animals, or, by telephone, to bureaucrats about securing building permits and to veterinarians about treatment options, debating the merits of pills versus injections, for a sick cougar. He once ran a chain of dance studios, then turned to producing a magic show on the Las Vegas Strip. This led him, by a circuitous route, to create an exotic-animal theme park behind the Aladdin Hotel. He dubbed that enterprise Predator's Paradise. "I started out buying two baby tigers, for all the wrong reasons," he says. "I know that now, but I didn't know it then." As soon as he established Keepers of the Wild as a nonprofit entity in 1995, Kraft began looking for donors, volunteers and a place for the animals to roam free. He was determined that the location approximate a variety of natural habitats. But the transition from show business impresario to chief cook and bottle washer of a nonprofit sanctuary wasn't easy.