Conservationist Jeff Corwin and ethologist Temple Grandin will headline Oklahoma City's ANIMAL Conference this September, as the biennial gathering returns with a shakeup to its usual format. The two-day event is set for September 18-19 at Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, 11 NW 11th St., and is hosted by the Kirkpatrick Foundation.
The conference is returning with major changes to its programming, according to The Oklahoman. Corwin will deliver the opening keynote, while Grandin will close out the event. Corwin currently hosts and executive produces “Extraordinary World with Jeff Corwin,” a documentary series that premiered on CBS in January 2025 and focuses on grassroots animal advocacy and environmental conservation, according to the Brady Hunter Foundation. His opening presentation is expected to address global conservation and ecological protection efforts.
Grandin, meanwhile, is known for pioneering standardized animal welfare auditing systems and humane livestock handling designs that have since been adopted by major meatpackers and restaurant chains nationwide. Her research on visual thinking helped shape objective scoring systems now used across the livestock handling industry, per the Kirkpatrick Foundation.
A Schedule Change After Four Triennial Events
The ANIMAL Conference was originally held every three years, with past editions in 2015, 2018, 2021 and 2024. Organizers permanently shifted to a biennial schedule starting with this September's event, shortening the gap between conferences to keep momentum going among regional animal welfare groups, according to the foundation.
This year's gathering also overlaps with a national event. The Animal Grantmakers Conference, known as AGCon 2026, is scheduled at the same Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center venue for September 16-17, immediately preceding the ANIMAL Conference through a venue and registration partnership, according to Animal Grantmakers. The arrangement gives select national funders cross-access to local Oklahoma animal welfare advocates during the back-to-back gatherings.
New $5,000 Awards Debut This Year
In June, the Kirkpatrick Foundation introduced five new $5,000 ANIMAL Conference Awards recognizing Oklahomans who advance animal wellbeing across veterinary care, journalism, architecture and design, farming and ranching, and restaurants and grocers. The new award categories mark the conference's first major financial incentive program aimed at spotlighting local leaders across a range of industries tied to humane animal practices.
The awards build on a much longer strategic push. The Kirkpatrick Foundation formally launched its Safe & Humane initiative in July 2012 with an explicit 20-year goal of making Oklahoma the safest and most humane place to be an animal by 2032, relying on a six-step strategy that includes studying issues, convening stakeholders, publishing findings and funding solutions, according to Oklahoma Animals. Established in Oklahoma City in 1955 by oil executive John Kirkpatrick and Eleanor Kirkpatrick, the foundation manages philanthropic funding across arts, culture, education, environmental conservation and animal wellbeing throughout central Oklahoma.
Shelter Progress and a Lingering Farm Animal Fight
The conference arrives as the state posts notable gains in shelter reform. Data released by Best Friends Animal Society in August showed that 52 percent of Oklahoma's animal shelters have achieved no-kill status by saving at least 90 percent of the pets entering their care, with grant funding from the Kirkpatrick Foundation backing much of that progress. Four Oklahoma municipal shelters reached the no-kill threshold during the first quarter of the year.
That progress traces back to the foundation's 2016 publication of “The Oklahoma Animal Study,” a 200-page report compiled from 114 stakeholder interviews conducted between 2013 and 2015 that established a baseline for animal welfare and legal protections statewide. The study concluded Oklahoma animals ranked about average nationally in treatment across domestic, farm and wild categories.
Farm animal welfare remains a tougher fight. A June 2024 report from the Kirkpatrick Policy Group found that approximately 480,000 pregnant sow pigs in Oklahoma spend their lives in gestation crates measuring 6.6 by 2 feet, even though polling showed 91 percent of Oklahomans support space requirements that would let livestock turn around and stretch. State legislative exemptions passed in 1991 spurred a major expansion of corporate industrial swine farming across rural Oklahoma, a dynamic that has complicated past efforts to phase out extreme confinement practices.
