Last summer, Helena residents Jena Sabatini and Kelly McDermott launched an epic endeavor on the Missouri River. They paddleboarded from Missouri Headwaters State Park to Fort Benton to raise funds and awareness for families facing cancer. The first two days of their journey – from Three Forks to Townsend – took them through rugged canyon country and working lands protected by Prickly Pear Land Trust.
“I love to see the world from three to five miles per hour,” Kelly says. “You can really take it in, observe nature, and see it in a way that few people do.”
In the York’s Island area, they passed a thriving great blue heron rookery where dozens of the massive birds have built their nests in a towering cottonwood gallery. The wading birds return year after year to raise their young on this stretch of the river because of abundant wetlands and fish. Thanks to two generous landowners, this habitat is now permanently protected by a conservation easement with Prickly Pear Land Trust.
The landowners have worked diligently for two decades to restore the native riverine habitat of York’s Island Ranch. Native wildlife – elk, whitetail deer, moose, bald eagles, pheasants, hawks, waterfowl, and trout – thrive on the river’s seasonal braids and ponds. When the Corps of Discovery travelled through here in 1805, Merriwether Lewis journaled about the beaver activity that had created a maze of islands and channels on this stretch of the mighty river. The expedition named these islands “York’s 8 Islands” in honor of York, the only African American member of the expedition and the first African American known to have traveled from the United States to the Pacific Ocean and back.
York’s Island Ranch is the sixth PPLT conservation easement along the Missouri River in Broadwater County. These easements now protect 5.5 miles of the Might Mo’s shoreline. As ranchers and farmers choose to protect their working lands from development, they are also expanding public access to wildlife and water. Because of them, generations of paddlers, birders, anglers, and hunters will be able to enjoy the same pristine watershed that Kelly and Jena experienced.
Sarah Ryan is the Communications and Development Manager at PPLT.
