Originally from Devils Lake, Pederson has been with the zoo for about five years.

“We train a lot of the animals over there and that’s really just so we can do medical procedures,” said Pederson.

There’s Sisco, a camel who will let them do hand vaccinations on him. The camel will come up to Pederson and let him put a halter on him, let’s Pederson brush him… “Everything,” Pederson said.

“With the bobcat too, he’ll go in the kennel for me, he’ll sit, he’ll jump on a scale for me,” Pederson said.

Ryan Pederson, North Trail lead keeper at Minot’s Roosevelt Park Zoo, is shown in the North Trail camel barn with the camels. Sisco, a camel, will let Pederson put a halter on him, brush him, etc.

“They’re all very smart. Like the otters, they do a lot. They go into a tube – that’s how we give them their vaccinations – they like reach out their paws,” he said.

“Noah, the sheep over there, he was the first animal that I started training. He does so much. He’s so excited about training,” Pederson said. “I hold the halter and he sticks his face into the halter – he wants it, he wants it on. He’ll follow me around wherever I ask him. Then we started this new thing where we have guests hold up stars. We have one person hold up a star and I say ‘star’ and he goes and finds it, and comes back to me. And then I say ‘star’ and he goes and finds that one. He’s very smart,” Pederson said.

As a kid, Pederson liked the outdoors and wildlife.

“We had a slough in my backyard so I would catch frogs and snakes all the time. I always liked being outside. It was always fun for me. And, of course, you always watched Steve Irwin all the time,” Pederson said. The late Irwin, of Australia, was a wildlife expert, zookeeper, conservationist, environmentalist and television personality.

“I remember as a kid we would always go to zoos,” he added.

Pederson went to the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, where he majored in fisheries and wildlife biology.”

“I had to do an internship and it was really hard finding a zoo internship. I found one in Minot and did it. It was like the best experience ever,” he said.

At that time he said Mitch Thompson was the lead keeper for the North Trail and as an intern Pederson shadowed Thompson. Thompson now is with the North Dakota Forest Service at Bottineau.

Coincidentally, he said Thompson also is from Devils Lake, attended UND and conducted FrogWatch classes at the zoo. Pederson now does the FrogWatch classes.

Pederson was among the first group of interns at the Minot zoo after the 2011 flood.

Once he graduated from UND, he said he was contacted by the Minot zoo and asked to apply for the seasonal position. He applied and was hired on as a seasonal keeper.

“At that time I was a floater and I really liked the North Trail,” he said. He worked in other areas of the zoo but two or three months later began working at the North Trail. He had the number two position at the North Trail and then became lead keeper.

Two other keepers for the North Trail are Baleigh Seeber, yearround keeper, and Bobbi Van Dyke, seasonal keeper.

Pederson said the North Trail keepers are responsible for husbandry and medical care of the animals along with the zoo’s full-time veterinarian Dr. Logan Wood.

He said they also assess the North Trail inhabitants’ diets, making sure they are getting the right diets as well as all their other needs throughout the seasons.

On that side of the zoo, he said they like to do guest interactions.

“We have keeper chat every day and we do goat encounter which volunteers help us out with,” he said. “There’s one (goat) over there – he’s named Erik – you could pet him all day,” he said.

He said the keeper chats are about a different animal each day. Wednesday’s keeper chat was with the great horned owl.

“Another big part of the job is just making it look nice over there like sweeping up the pathways, bathrooms and the enrichment for the animals too,” Pederson said. He said the enrichment can be purchased but sometimes they also put it together themselves.

The North Trail has around 30 animals including bison, reindeer, bobcat, Scottish Highland cattle, wolves, goats, sheep, otters, camels, owls, eagles, tortoises, black-footed ferrets, prairie dogs and others.

“We call ourselves North Trail like a brand so we deal with the most variety of animals – we have our carnivores, our hoofed stock and our reptiles, and we have small animals to large animals,” Pederson said.

The North Trail also has honey bees.

“Five Star Farms brings them and we just take care of them – they really take care of themselves,” he said.

The bees have a hive enclosed in a case in the North Trail Discovery Barn. The honey bees can leave the area through a tube to gather pollen and return the same way.

“I find them all the way over by the tiger. They go all the way on the other side of the zoo,” Pederson said.

Of all the North Trail animals, Pederson said the bison are his favorites. “I really like the bison. If any animal is made for North Dakota, it’s the bison.”

This year two bison calves were born at the zoo. “Huck and Tucker,” said Pederson, giving their names. He said names were picked for the calves, then the names were put on Facebook and people could vote on them.

The North Trail continues to make improvements.

“The biggest new addition we had a couple years ago and that was the bison/camel barn. The goat bridge too was a big one,” he said.

What’s next for him?

“Just keep doing what I’m doing,” Pederson said. He said he’d also like to get more involved in conservation.

Roosevelt Park Zoo and the Greater Minot Zoological Society, a nonprofit support organization for the zoo, are extensively involved in conservation – local and worldwide.

Pedersen and others have gone to Wall, S.D., to count black-footed ferrets. The ferrets that are caught are checked, and if not already tagged, are tagged and then released back to their homes. North Dakota no longer has black-footed ferrets.

“That’s the whole reason we decided to get these jobs- for conservation,” Pederson said of the keepers. He said the keeper chats and talking to people does quit a bit for conservation.

“The idea is you teach people about the animals and they’re going to tell like 10 other people but once they leave, they’re going to know about these animals and care about the animals and they’re going to want to keep them around,” Pederson said.

(Prairie Profile is a weekly feature profiling interesting people in our region. We welcome suggestions from our readers. Call Regional Editor Eloise Ogden at 857-1944 or call 1-800-735-3229. You also can send email suggestions to eogden@minotdailynews.com.)

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