On a wintery Friday afternoon, Sheridan Community Land Trust Recreation Program Manager Jared Koenig sat tinkering with his latest creation – a contraption made of steel and bolts that form an articulating jaw that looks like it could nip at twigs and shrubs like a mule deer.
However, this creation isn’t intended to browse your brush. “It is a shackle that has a trigger mechanism that opens the jaws to release whatever is hooked to it,” he said.
In this case, the shackle is hooked to an H-brace and steel cable to create the backbone of what Jared calls a “floater-friendly, debris-friendly fence.”
And with it, Koenig hopes to unshackle an opportunity that will help people explore the often-overlooked rivers and streams of Wyoming.
“Livestock producers all over struggle with variable water flows. When the water is low, the livestock can walk under the fence, and when the water is high, debris can tear down the whole fence,” he explained. “This fence allows debris and boaters to pass under the fence while still providing a visual barrier to livestock.”
The fence is comprised of a steel cable suspended between a pair of H-braces installed on each bank at the creek’s typical high-water mark. “The cable supports a hanging ‘curtain’ that drapes down to the water and pivots from the cable allowing boats or logs to float through them,” he elaborated.
“It will help ag producers be more efficient and effective and keep recreational floaters safe.” ~ Jared Koenig, SCLT Director of Recreation
The shackle fixes a problem that plagues many ranchers: how do you keep your fence from being damaged when spring runoff brings big debris like fallen trees directly into your fence?
“The shackle’s quick-release mechanism allows us to control where the fence disconnects so it doesn’t release debris into the waterway,” he relayed.
It solves a problem near and dear to Jared’s heart. He’s a passionate paddler who frequently floats Wyoming’s waterways. But he has found accessing rivers and creeks can be a challenge, even downright dangerous because fences often create hazards that aren’t always safe to navigate.
With a lifetime spent helping on his family’s ranch outside of Aladdin, Jared said he understands why fences across waterways are needed and hopes his innovation will help continue “a long history of ranching and recreation existing side by side.”
It’s also a bit of a father-and-son project, with Jared’s dad, Tim Koenig, helping Jared with the design and donating his time, materials, and use of his plasma table to help bring his son’s idea to life. Together, they’ve utilized their engineers’ minds and ranchers’ practicality to create an effective, economical design.
The floater-and-debris-friendly fence is being tested at SCLT’s Big Goose Natural Area, where cattle graze along Big Goose Creek. Once he hones in on a final design, Jared intends to put together a guide that allows anyone interested to install their own friendly fence soup to nuts.
The Vernon S. and Rowena W. Griffith Foundation and the Wyoming Office for Outdoor Recreation helped fund and develop SCLT’s pilot design for floater- and debris-friendly fence.
