Animal Welfare and the Future of Zoos | Ron Kagan | TEDxOaklandUniversity

Detroit Zoological Society Executive Director Ron Kagan will share a view of the future that includes a different relationship between human and non-human animals. Zoos will demonstrate a fundamental commitment to being “patient-centered” – ensuring a great quality of life for every single animal in a zoo. Not just aspirations and words but reality. He will explain the challenging responsibility involved with keeping living beings “captive“ and the need to deliver on a decades-long promise to make captivity similar to (and possibly better than) the wild. Ron Kagan is the Executive Director and CEO of the Detroit Zoological Society. An advocate and activist for compassionate conservation and animal welfare, Ron is a leader in environmental and humane education. Over the past thirty years, Ron’s career background includes working and consulting for numerous zoos and aquaria. Ron has authored several papers in scientific journals, encyclopedic entries, and book chapters on both museum and zoological subjects.