Last Chance Fencing Project

HFF Intern Zachary Segall works on the Last Chance fencing project.

They say that good fences make good neighbors; they can also make good conservation. However, good fences take a lot of hard work to construct and maintain. An electric fence has been keeping cows out of the river and protecting the fragile banks of the Henry’s Fork across from Last Chance and Pinehaven for over twenty years. This electric fence was failing and required almost daily attention to keep it functioning. Therefore, the Henry’s Fork Foundation partnered with Harriman State Park, the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Caribou-Targhee National Forest to replace about five miles of the exhausted electric fence with a let-down barbed wire fence over the past two summers.
Our summer interns and I visited the new fence recently to get it ready for the season and the arrival of cows to graze nearby. We felt confident that we could get the barbed wire tightened and posts put up before the cows’ debut on June 28th. However, when we arrived near the log jam to look at the fence, we discovered a maze of broken posts and split wires. Our work was cut out for us as we had a job to do that even a practiced cowboy would grimace at. Winter is always hard on all fences, and this past winter was no different. Just as the mighty lodgepole pine may buckle under sub-zero temperatures and relentless snow pack, it seems so will a 3 foot bare post.
The next few days were committed to repairs and replacements that will need to be made every year due to the extreme winters that occur in this region. To add another dimension to the project, we discovered that the fisherman’s access gate had been cut with wire cutters. This gate at the north end of the fence has been a complaint of many fishermen over the years, as it is difficult to open and is strung with barbed wire that can easily tear waders. To address these concerns and eliminate a weak spot in the fence for the cows, HFF is going to construct a stile at this point to allow angler access. Presently, there is no gate, only barbed wire, meaning that until we construct the stile, fisherman will have to walk into the river to get to the other side.
Concerns have also been voiced about cows going around the north boundary of the fence and getting into the river across from Box Canyon villages. Because the fence is not an allotment boundary, but a rather a riparian buffer that keeps cows off the banks, building more fence would only push the cows further upstream, where at any point they will go around and get to the river – (note: the thought was to bring it up to the cliff area, where a cow theoretically would not be able to climb down for most of the Box Canyon). The logic behind the placement of the fence was to keep the cows off vulnerable banks, where they would do the most damage – not to enclose them completely. I spent quite a bit of time walking past the northern end of the fence, and I feel that the fence ends at a good location. If cows do go around it, they are not causing much erosion as the banks at this point have a foundation of volcanic rock that extends itself into the river. A cow accessing the river here is not going to cause damage as it is literally walking on rock.
Currently the fence is up and the cows are giving it the final test of its effectiveness . While this fencing project has gained epic proportions throughout the years, we believe it will make good neighbors between the people, cows, fish and wildlife of the Henry’s Fork.