Our company began when Pat Brown-Berry (A noted bat biologist) showed us a picture of a bat gate in the Bats and Mines publication from the American Cave Conservation Association. She was concerned with the poor workmanship of existing volunteer gate projects. Could we safely and professionally install such a gate?

The specified structure was simple enough but the work sites and transportation issues were daunting. We needed more training to be safe on the job. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) had training available for just such work.

We spent a week with OSHA becoming certified underground and surface miners. Another week was spent at Mt Rainer learning the state of the art in bat gate building. As we became more proficient, we earned the ability to teach mine safety courses and monitor mines for unsafe gasses.

One of us is a licensed professional engineer. This allows us to design gates for odd shaped openings, dangerous mines and specific customer requirements. Such requirements could include the requirement for the structure to be invisible to the public from certain viewing angles. Other requirements might involve corrosive environments.

One of us is a horse and mule wrangler. This allows us to use pack animals to carry materials and tools to remote sites. Dealing with these animals requires extensive experience with their habits. For instance, a mule will not tolerate an imbalance of loads in his sidesaddles. The way they carry themselves will tell a wrangler whether the load is acceptable and the other rigging is correctly attached.

One of us is a commercial helicopter pilot. We got the experience as a rescue pilot in the U.S. Coast Guard. We have experience in lifting external loads and placing them in small, isolated places. At least these sites are not moving up and down in heavy seas.

One of us has an MS in Electrical Engineering. He has designed, installed and maintained solar power (Photovoltaic or just PV) systems for several years. These systems store energy in batteries or connect to the utility grid. One of them even powered a NASA project that turned water into electricity. The systems range from ten Watts to four hundred thousand Watts.

Our jobs are mostly done in the southwest United States. We have worked as far away as the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Washington State. We install gates in openings in adits, shafts, declines and caves. All openings provide the BCI recommended spacing for free access to bats.

We have excellent references. Our customers are federal (Forest Service, Park Service, BLM), State (Fish and wildlife), military, and private landowners. Many of them have asked us back for repeat work when new openings were discovered. Our design packages fully describe the project and pictorially show the finished gate.

Frontier is a woman-owned small business registered with Dunn and Bradstreet and the U.S. Government Central Contractor Registration.