Rick Hester Bio

Rick Hester is the Curator of Behavioral Husbandry for the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado. He oversees all of the zoo’s behavioral programs; these include the zoo’s animal training for husbandry, medical, and public show behaviors, enrichment, developing programs to improve problem behavior situations, and the zoo’s formal animal welfare assessments.

He has worked at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo for 15 years. The majority of that time he was an animal keeper caring for various species of primates, including many species of callitrichids, old and new world monkeys, and great apes. In 2015, he started working with Dr. Susan Friedman and began to understand the importance of behavior analysis and its application for animals in human care.

In addition to his work at Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, he is a consultant and course co-instructor for Susan Friedman’s Behavior Works LLC.
People can email me at rhester@cmzoo.org or rph@behaviorworks.org