Detroit Zoo Ron Kagan's Tenure at Detroit Zoo

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I have seen off-hand comments in a few threads over the years about the decline of the Detroit Zoo, director Ron Kagan's role in it, and losses within the collection.

I have not been able to find relevant details about the situation, as non-zoochat sources tend to bring up the elephant situation (which I know enough about) and often otherwise follow the same themes as many zoo director profiles, crediting Kagan with moving from museum-style exhibits to naturalistic exhibits modeled on animal's natural habitats.

It is not uncommon for zoochatters to complain about losses of species diversity in facilities in the age of homogenization and it is not uncommon for even fairly recent zoo directors to be credited for pioneering naturalistic exhibits in the mainstream press, so almost none of this tells me much of interest about the truth of the matter.

For someone who isn't as familiar with Detroit in specific, could someone educate me on where Detroit Zoo stood before Ron Kagan and how it changed under his tenure to better understand the situation?
 
JVM said:
I have seen off-hand comments in a few threads over the years about the decline of the Detroit Zoo, director Ron Kagan's role in it, and losses within the collection.

I have not been able to find relevant details about the situation, as non-zoochat sources tend to bring up the elephant situation (which I know enough about) and often otherwise follow the same themes as many zoo director profiles, crediting Kagan with moving from museum-style exhibits to naturalistic exhibits modeled on animal's natural habitats.

It is not uncommon for zoochatters to complain about losses of species diversity in facilities in the age of homogenization and it is not uncommon for even fairly recent zoo directors to be credited for pioneering naturalistic exhibits in the mainstream press, so almost none of this tells me much of interest about the truth of the matter.

For someone who isn't as familiar with Detroit in specific, could someone educate me on where Detroit Zoo stood before Ron Kagan and how it changed under his tenure to better understand the situation?
Click to expand...
Change in focus is probably a more accurate descriptor than decline. It's quite clear that the former director's focus was on maintaining high levels of animal welfare. The biggest downsides from a visitor perspective are a significantly smaller collection and potentially limited viewing options. On the upside, infrastructure is well maintained and the zoo has been able to complete construction projects on a regular basis. The collection reduction is mainly attributable to merging smaller exhibits into bigger ones, along with discontinuing mixes. Nothing like the closures of big exhibit complexes like at Baltimore in the early 2000s. I'm certain that attendance increased during Kagan's tenure, and I'd guess a casual zoogoer would be impressed by the new penguin center and wouldn't notice the decline in species with the exception of the well-publicized elephant move.

As for specifics, the zoo grounds look much as they would have in the 1990s. The general layout is a suburban park style with broad paths, lots of lawns, and open, dry moated exhibits. Sort of like Brookfield with fewer buildings. In the interests of welfare some exhibits have been merged, others have been extended into adjacent open space. A few new or heavily modified exhibits have been constructed as well. Collection-wise, mammals are probably easiest to keep track of. Here's a probably incomplete but representative list of mammal losses vs gains over the last ~15 years.

Losses: Ruffed Lemur, Drill, Lion-tailed Macaque, Capybara, Przewalski's Horse, Brazilian Tapir, Guanaco, Collared Peccary, Hippopotamus, Fallow Deer, White-lipped Deer, Southern Pudu, Pronghorn, Takin, Lesser Kudu, Painted Dog, Bush Dog, Arctic Fox, American Black Bear, Syrian Brown Bear, Coati, Binturong, Meerkat, Harbor Seal, Harp Seal, Gray Seal. Note that a few of these, like Pronghorn and Takin, were in and out in fairly short order.

Gains: Allen's Swamp Monkey (replaced Macaque), Beaver (new exhibit), Straw-colored Fruit Bat (replaced Meerkat), Wildebeest (new mix with Zebra), Gray Wolf (replaced Wapiti and Przewalski Horse), Sea Otter (replaced pinnipeds).

A fair number of losses result from discontinuation of former mixes. The camel paddock formerly held up to ~4 hoofstock species, now is down to camels and maybe one individual Cervus sp. The guanaco paddock formerly held peccary, pronghorn, tapir, and capybara at various times, is now depopulated in preparation for conversion to a children's zoo. Drill used to be mixed with gorillas. The sea otter exhibit formerly had a mix of the three pinnipeds.

In terms of exhibit changes, several examples exist of expansions of existing exhibits into unused space (lawns) - lion, tiger, red panda.

Many other examples are of exhibit mergers - former Binturong is now part of the Giant Anteater exhibit; Black and Syrian bear exhibits are now part of Grizzly exhibit, Hippo exhibit is now part of Aardvark exhibit, Arctic Fox exhibit is in process of becoming a Polar Bear viewing area. I think the former Pudu exhibit is now a garden.

There is a range of variation in how effective for viewing the exhibits are. Great Ape exhibits have awkward, limited viewing where you can only see a small portion of the exhibit from any one viewing area. As a result it is difficult to watch them outdoors for any length of time. Polar Bears are often sleeping in unviewable locations. Aardvark and Beaver are virtually impossible to see. In contrast, other exhibits like the Tigers, Red Pandas, and River Otters work really well. Overall, from a zoo visitor's perspective, it's not really the lack of species that is frustrating, it's that there's big spaces between exhibits and then in half of them the animals are invisible because they're behind a hill or asleep in their indoor holding.
 
I learned at the tail end of last year that Arctic Ring of Life was controversial about being too big - lol as a staunch defender of the exhibit I accidentally waded into a big debate!

Detroit is one of my favorite facilities because of the spacing/population. I'd rather have large, dynamic, quality exhibits than 4 or 5 smaller exhibits. I know I got lucky when I went last because Jebbie and Laerke were up close and playing together - but large, expansive habitats that improve animal welfare and wellbeing is more important to me. Detroit Zoo was a childhood zoo for me (I'm from the west side of the state, so John Ball Zoo was my home zoo) and in my opinion, Arctic Ring of Life should be the floor, not the ceiling for exhibits
 
Gondwana said:
Losses: Ruffed Lemur, Drill, Lion-tailed Macaque, Capybara, Przewalski's Horse, Brazilian Tapir, Guanaco, Collared Peccary, Hippopotamus, Fallow Deer, White-lipped Deer, Southern Pudu, Pronghorn, Takin, Lesser Kudu, Painted Dog, Bush Dog, Arctic Fox, American Black Bear, Syrian Brown Bear, Coati, Binturong, Meerkat, Harbor Seal, Harp Seal, Gray Seal. Note that a few of these, like Pronghorn and Takin, were in and out in fairly short order.
Click to expand...
Add Fennec Fox to the “quick in and out” list. I didn’t even know Detroit had them until last year, and they were long gone by then.
I’m pretty sure somebody said they saw a Wapiti at Detroit this year.
Does Detroit still have African Crested Porcupines? If not, add them to the list.
And I also recall there being an Agouti in the former rainforest in Amphibiville (now the Giant Salamander room).
Gondwana said:
former Binturong is now part of the Giant Anteater exhibit
Click to expand...
Actually, former binturong is now part of the Wolverine exhibit. Former Coati is now part of the Anteater exhibit.
Finally, is Detroit really Fallow Deer-free now? I remember seeing those in like 3 different exhibits.
Gondwana said:
Overall, from a zoo visitor's perspective, it's not really the lack of species that is frustrating, it's that there's big spaces between exhibits and then in half of them the animals are invisible because they're behind a hill or asleep in their indoor holding.
Click to expand...
I’d say it’s both. I’ve never had issues with the ape exhibits, but the beavers and aardvarks have always eluded me (and with the aardvarks expanding into the hippo exhibit, they’re borderline invisible), and the new sloth lounge was clearly not designed for viewing arboreal creatures with its awkward slant.
I used to visit Detroit annually until 2017, so I noticed the disappearance of many animals. It was like, “Oh, looks like the gorillas are eluding me. Guess I’ll go look at the Lion-tailed Macaques instead-where’d the macaques go?!” The end result is less animals seen overall and not enough vitamin Z.
 
Corangurilla said:
I’m pretty sure somebody said they saw a Wapiti at Detroit this year.
Click to expand...
I saw one earlier in the year also, but didn't in a recent visit. Could have just been off exhibit.

Corangurilla said:
Finally, is Detroit really Fallow Deer-free now? I remember seeing those in like 3 different exhibits.
Click to expand...
It appears the fallow deer are gone. For a while they were in the eland, camel, and guanaco exhibits. More recently they were only in the guanaco exhibit, which is now mammal-free.
 
JVM said:
I have seen off-hand comments in a few threads over the years about the decline of the Detroit Zoo, director Ron Kagan's role in it, and losses within the collection.
Click to expand...

I have been going to the Detroit zoo since the 1950s, and have been a docent there since 2005. I started volunteering at the zoo just after Ron Kagan's controversial decision to move the zoos two elephants to a California sanctuary. This move infuriated many people in the zoo community because Ron was quite vocal about why the zoo was doing it. He said that after years of trying to cope with welfare issues, the staff concluded that it just was not possible to provide a humane habitat in a northern zoo with limited space and only two elephants--citing concerns about the need for elephants to walk miles each day to preserve foot health and their emotional need for a larger group of elephants. Statements like that made him a pariah in zoo circles because elephants are one of the most popular "attractions" at zoos, and it put zoos with elephants on the defensive. Even after several other northern zoos such as the Brookfield and Lincoln Park zoos in Chicago closed their elephant habitats (2010), and Toronto sent its elephants to warmer climes, the resentment lingers. It is important to note that his was not a blanked indictment of elephants in zoos, just that Detroit did not have the means to pull it off. If anyone wants to see the kind of habitat Ron advocated they should go the North Carolina Zoo where seven elephants share a 40-acre grassland habitat with a variety of other species. Take your binoculars, though--you won't be seeing those elephants from a distance of a few yards like you would at most zoos.

As others have pointed out, Ron concentrated on few large habitats with better conditions for residents. The zoo boasts the 4-acre Great Apes of Harambee habitat that house a bachelor group of three Western Lowland Gorillas and an integrated troop of 12 chimpanzees. In 2000 the zoo opened Amphibiville, home of the National Amphibian Conservation Center, where the 2/3 of the building "behind the scenes" is devoted to amphibian conservation. In 2001 Ron helped move the zoo's polar bears from the tiny habitant where bears had resided since 1928 to the 4-acre $15 million dollar Arctic Ring of Life, still the largest polar bear habitat in the U.S., and the first to incorporate natural surfaces such as grass, dirt, and rocks, instead of just bare concrete. In 2006 the zoo tripled the size of the red kangaroo and wallaby habitat and turned it into the Australian Outback Adventure, where guests could walk through habitat. In 2009 Ron helped the zoo establish the Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics (CZAAWE), which is devoted to establishing and disseminating information about best practices for zoo animal welfare. In 2012 Ron helped establish the Kalter/Lezotte Fund for Wildlife Rescue. In 2016 Ron helped raise the $30 million needed to open the Polk Penguin Conservation Center, the biggest and best penguin center in the country. In 2019 Ron helped open a $3.5 million expansion to the Amur tiger habitat, increasing its size to one acre. He helped the zoo develop a GreenPrint, a program to increase sustainability throughout the zoo through big visible changes that can help raise public awareness among visitors about what they can do to live more sustainably.

Is the public on-board with all of these changes? Not all of them. The biggest complaint I hear from visitors is that they can't see animals they came to view because of the large habitats. Not every one is satisfied with my answers to this complaint. I ask them wouldn't they rather see animals in comfortable habitats displaying species-specific behaviors than stressed animals in small enclosures with stereotypies? I tell them that I regularly see all of the animals in the zoo because I've taken some time and trouble to learn about about their habits and behaviors, so I know at what time of day and under what weather conditions they are most likely to be active--and then I tell them when to see the animals they want. That doesn't go down very well with families that spend $150 once a year to visit the zoo on a hot August afternoon. But there are some visitors that get it, and they get so much out of their visits that they keep coming back.

One more comment about Ron. Many people found his personality to be pedantic, abrasive and self-aggrandizing. However you feel about him personally, however, you have to admire a guy who leads big donors on expeditions to the Antarctic to help determine how best to simulate a natural penguin environment and then raised the $30 million necessary to build it. I've heard that the new zoo Executive Director and CEO Dr. Hayley Murphy disagrees with some of the policies of the past, so it should be interesting to see what direction she takes.
 
One of my problems with Kagan was his connections with both the HSUS and PETA, an organization that anyone in the field knows damn well to not associate with.

Another problem, as mentioned, are the phase-outs. I don't want to regurgitate what I've said before, so here's some posts from another topic that I've made a bit back: Zoo/Aquarium Hot Takes

Not all phase-outs were to make room for exhibit expansion. That saltwater aquarium in the Wildlife Interpretative Gallery, grey crowned cranes, meerkats, and lion-tailed macaques are just a few species I named off the top of my head.
 
Azamat Shackleford said:
Not all phase-outs were to make room for exhibit expansion. That saltwater aquarium in the Wildlife Interpretative Gallery, grey crowned cranes, meerkats, and lion-tailed macaques are just a few species I named off the top of my head.
Click to expand...
To be fair, Lion-tailed Macaques are being phased out as a whole.
 
Gondwana said:
Change in focus is probably a more accurate descriptor than decline. It's quite clear that the former director's focus was on maintaining high levels of animal welfare. The biggest downsides from a visitor perspective are a significantly smaller collection and potentially limited viewing options. On the upside, infrastructure is well maintained and the zoo has been able to complete construction projects on a regular basis. The collection reduction is mainly attributable to merging smaller exhibits into bigger ones, along with discontinuing mixes. Nothing like the closures of big exhibit complexes like at Baltimore in the early 2000s. I'm certain that attendance increased during Kagan's tenure, and I'd guess a casual zoogoer would be impressed by the new penguin center and wouldn't notice the decline in species with the exception of the well-publicized elephant move.

As for specifics, the zoo grounds look much as they would have in the 1990s. The general layout is a suburban park style with broad paths, lots of lawns, and open, dry moated exhibits. Sort of like Brookfield with fewer buildings. In the interests of welfare some exhibits have been merged, others have been extended into adjacent open space. A few new or heavily modified exhibits have been constructed as well. Collection-wise, mammals are probably easiest to keep track of. Here's a probably incomplete but representative list of mammal losses vs gains over the last ~15 years.

Losses: Ruffed Lemur, Drill, Lion-tailed Macaque, Capybara, Przewalski's Horse, Brazilian Tapir, Guanaco, Collared Peccary, Hippopotamus, Fallow Deer, White-lipped Deer, Southern Pudu, Pronghorn, Takin, Lesser Kudu, Painted Dog, Bush Dog, Arctic Fox, American Black Bear, Syrian Brown Bear, Coati, Binturong, Meerkat, Harbor Seal, Harp Seal, Gray Seal. Note that a few of these, like Pronghorn and Takin, were in and out in fairly short order.

Gains: Allen's Swamp Monkey (replaced Macaque), Beaver (new exhibit), Straw-colored Fruit Bat (replaced Meerkat), Wildebeest (new mix with Zebra), Gray Wolf (replaced Wapiti and Przewalski Horse), Sea Otter (replaced pinnipeds).

A fair number of losses result from discontinuation of former mixes. The camel paddock formerly held up to ~4 hoofstock species, now is down to camels and maybe one individual Cervus sp. The guanaco paddock formerly held peccary, pronghorn, tapir, and capybara at various times, is now depopulated in preparation for conversion to a children's zoo. Drill used to be mixed with gorillas. The sea otter exhibit formerly had a mix of the three pinnipeds.

In terms of exhibit changes, several examples exist of expansions of existing exhibits into unused space (lawns) - lion, tiger, red panda.

Many other examples are of exhibit mergers - former Binturong is now part of the Giant Anteater exhibit; Black and Syrian bear exhibits are now part of Grizzly exhibit, Hippo exhibit is now part of Aardvark exhibit, Arctic Fox exhibit is in process of becoming a Polar Bear viewing area. I think the former Pudu exhibit is now a garden.

There is a range of variation in how effective for viewing the exhibits are. Great Ape exhibits have awkward, limited viewing where you can only see a small portion of the exhibit from any one viewing area. As a result it is difficult to watch them outdoors for any length of time. Polar Bears are often sleeping in unviewable locations. Aardvark and Beaver are virtually impossible to see. In contrast, other exhibits like the Tigers, Red Pandas, and River Otters work really well. Overall, from a zoo visitor's perspective, it's not really the lack of species that is frustrating, it's that there's big spaces between exhibits and then in half of them the animals are invisible because they're behind a hill or asleep in their indoor holding.
Click to expand...
Thank you, this was the most informative post for me in terms of containing information I had not found in previous threads. I can see why some of those losses would sting - unique primates, a ton of hoofstock, canids, bears, pinnipeds... wildebeest are a pretty cool gain at least.

sleemon said:
I have been going to the Detroit zoo since the 1950s, and have been a docent there since 2005. I started volunteering at the zoo just after Ron Kagan's controversial decision to move the zoos two elephants to a California sanctuary. This move infuriated many people in the zoo community because Ron was quite vocal about why the zoo was doing it. He said that after years of trying to cope with welfare issues, the staff concluded that it just was not possible to provide a humane habitat in a northern zoo with limited space and only two elephants--citing concerns about the need for elephants to walk miles each day to preserve foot health and their emotional need for a larger group of elephants. Statements like that made him a pariah in zoo circles because elephants are one of the most popular "attractions" at zoos, and it put zoos with elephants on the defensive. Even after several other northern zoos such as the Brookfield and Lincoln Park zoos in Chicago closed their elephant habitats (2010), and Toronto sent its elephants to warmer climes, the resentment lingers. It is important to note that his was not a blanked indictment of elephants in zoos, just that Detroit did not have the means to pull it off. If anyone wants to see the kind of habitat Ron advocated they should go the North Carolina Zoo where seven elephants share a 40-acre grassland habitat with a variety of other species. Take your binoculars, though--you won't be seeing those elephants from a distance of a few yards like you would at most zoos.

As others have pointed out, Ron concentrated on few large habitats with better conditions for residents. The zoo boasts the 4-acre Great Apes of Harambee habitat that house a bachelor group of three Western Lowland Gorillas and an integrated troop of 12 chimpanzees. In 2000 the zoo opened Amphibiville, home of the National Amphibian Conservation Center, where the 2/3 of the building "behind the scenes" is devoted to amphibian conservation. In 2001 Ron helped move the zoo's polar bears from the tiny habitant where bears had resided since 1928 to the 4-acre $15 million dollar Arctic Ring of Life, still the largest polar bear habitat in the U.S., and the first to incorporate natural surfaces such as grass, dirt, and rocks, instead of just bare concrete. In 2006 the zoo tripled the size of the red kangaroo and wallaby habitat and turned it into the Australian Outback Adventure, where guests could walk through habitat. In 2009 Ron helped the zoo establish the Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics (CZAAWE), which is devoted to establishing and disseminating information about best practices for zoo animal welfare. In 2012 Ron helped establish the Kalter/Lezotte Fund for Wildlife Rescue. In 2016 Ron helped raise the $30 million needed to open the Polk Penguin Conservation Center, the biggest and best penguin center in the country. In 2019 Ron helped open a $3.5 million expansion to the Amur tiger habitat, increasing its size to one acre. He helped the zoo develop a GreenPrint, a program to increase sustainability throughout the zoo through big visible changes that can help raise public awareness among visitors about what they can do to live more sustainably.

Is the public on-board with all of these changes? Not all of them. The biggest complaint I hear from visitors is that they can't see animals they came to view because of the large habitats. Not every one is satisfied with my answers to this complaint. I ask them wouldn't they rather see animals in comfortable habitats displaying species-specific behaviors than stressed animals in small enclosures with stereotypies? I tell them that I regularly see all of the animals in the zoo because I've taken some time and trouble to learn about about their habits and behaviors, so I know at what time of day and under what weather conditions they are most likely to be active--and then I tell them when to see the animals they want. That doesn't go down very well with families that spend $150 once a year to visit the zoo on a hot August afternoon. But there are some visitors that get it, and they get so much out of their visits that they keep coming back.

One more comment about Ron. Many people found his personality to be pedantic, abrasive and self-aggrandizing. However you feel about him personally, however, you have to admire a guy who leads big donors on expeditions to the Antarctic to help determine how best to simulate a natural penguin environment and then raised the $30 million necessary to build it. I've heard that the new zoo Executive Director and CEO Dr. Hayley Murphy disagrees with some of the policies of the past, so it should be interesting to see what direction she takes.
Click to expand...
Your post is extremely well-written but a lot of it is in line with what I gleamed from public descriptions of the Detroit Zoo and Kagan - except for that very last paragraph! I would love to hear more about the expedition.

In general conclusion, so far Kagan sounds like... exactly any other zoo director. World-acclaimed exhibits for fewer and less unique species is the AZA standard right now.
 
Azamat Shackleford said:
One of my problems with Kagan was his connections with both the HSUS and PETA, an organization that anyone in the field knows damn well to not associate with.

Another problem, as mentioned, are the phase-outs. I don't want to regurgitate what I've said before, so here's some posts from another topic that I've made a bit back: Zoo/Aquarium Hot Takes

Not all phase-outs were to make room for exhibit expansion. That saltwater aquarium in the Wildlife Interpretative Gallery, grey crowned cranes, meerkats, and lion-tailed macaques are just a few species I named off the top of my head.
Click to expand...

I can think of two incidents in which Ron cooperated with PETA. The first was in the 2002 rescue of the Suarez Six, polar bears which the Mexican Suarez Brothers Circus had been exhibiting around the Caribbean under the most inhumane conditions imaginable. It took the concerted efforts of many organizations, including PETA and the Detroit Zoo to obtain the release of these animals and transfer them to U.S. zoos. You can read an account of Bärle, the bear that went to the Detroit Zoo and ended up successfully breeding and raising a cub, in Else Pousen's excellent book Bärle's Story. Call me crazy, but I think it was better to cooperate with PETA to rescue those bears than to let them die under the hot sun of the Caribbean.

Another incident in which the zoo under Ron's leadership cooperated with PETA was in the rescue of Polly, a Syrian brown bear whom a private owner was exhibiting in a little traveling circus. The story I head, which I have not verified, is that Polly had been confined in a small cage and made to run a wheel like a hamster wheel. The rescue efforts lead to Polly's tenure at the Detroit Zoo where she tended to hang out in the back of her habitat away from people because she was such a traumatized animal. Eventually the zoo send her to a bear sanctuary in Colorado. If you had seen Polly, you might have thought it worth cooperating with the devil to free her.

As far as the phase-outs go, I don't think they were due to habitat expansion, as all of the more recent ones such as the tiger habitat expansion, the giraffe habitat expansion and the penguin center took place on unused land. My experience with zoos has been that species come and go, but that doesn't mean the total number of species has declined. About the time our last lion-tailed macaque died, for example, I read an article that said the AZA was discouraging the housing of that species in zoos. Today, Allen's swamp monkeys currently occupy the old macaque habitat. When our two female grey seals departed to participate in the SSP, they were replaced by two (soon to be three) Southern sea otters. You must keep in mind that when an animal population ages out at a zoo, there may not be sufficient animals available with which to replace them. If you look at the total number of species housed at comparably sized zoos I think that the you would not find that the Detroit Zoo has far fewer than most.
 
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Corangurilla said:
Add Fennec Fox to the “quick in and out” list. I didn’t even know Detroit had them until last year, and they were long gone by then.
I’m pretty sure somebody said they saw a Wapiti at Detroit this year.
Does Detroit still have African Crested Porcupines? If not, add them to the list.
And I also recall there being an Agouti in the former rainforest in Amphibiville (now the Giant Salamander room).

Actually, former binturong is now part of the Wolverine exhibit. Former Coati is now part of the Anteater exhibit.
Finally, is Detroit really Fallow Deer-free now? I remember seeing those in like 3 different exhibits.

I’d say it’s both. I’ve never had issues with the ape exhibits, but the beavers and aardvarks have always eluded me (and with the aardvarks expanding into the hippo exhibit, they’re borderline invisible), and the new sloth lounge was clearly not designed for viewing arboreal creatures with its awkward slant.
I used to visit Detroit annually until 2017, so I noticed the disappearance of many animals. It was like, “Oh, looks like the gorillas are eluding me. Guess I’ll go look at the Lion-tailed Macaques instead-where’d the macaques go?!” The end result is less animals seen overall and not enough vitamin Z.
Click to expand...

There was a herd of fallow deer on Belle Isle, a city park in the middle of the river, and it was decided rather than cull the herd they'd move them to the main zoo, and they couldn't put them all in one exhibit so they were scattered around. I imagine the herd has pretty much died off by now.
 
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