Charles Eliot created the first land trust in 1891 in Massachusetts. Now there are an estimated 1,200 and since 1988 the amount of land set aside has more than doubled, from two million acres to almost five million. The biggest land trust in Montana, and one of the biggest in the country, is the Montana Land Reliance (MLR), a 23-year-old trust that currently has 750 miles of riverbank under permanent easement, including portions of the Smith, Blackfoot, Big Hole, Swan and Stillwater rivers. Many of these easements started out as only short-term arrangements and became something more permanent. Such is the case on the H2-O Ranch in the Blackfoot Valley (see photo), where a short-term arrangement to restore damaged wetlands led to a 3,800-acre easement. The effort started in 1993 when the ranch, Trout Unlimited, Ducks Unlimited and state and federal agencies worked together to restore 35 drained oxbows on over 200 acres. Three years later, the H2-O Ranch donated an easement on the 3,800 acres to the MLR, protecting it forever.
But conservation easements are only the first step. They only guarantee what won’t happen to the land. The landowner still has many options as to what will happen to the land, which is where wealthy property owners and the incipient restoration business comes in.
Mike Sprague is owner and president of Trout Headwaters Inc. [THI], based in Livingston, Mont. His company specializes in restoring the natural functions and structures of creeks and ponds. Like Fay’s company, THI employs a slew of scientists and engineers, calling on as many disciplines as possible. “Rivers live in a balance between the amount of sediments they deposit and the amount they transport,” Sprague says, adding that to some extent, natural erosion is always going to exist. Banks do wash out and pools do fill with sediments-this is how habitat is created. But where is the line between erosion and stabilization? In the past, riprap has been used to stabilize banks that have been pounded by cattle. But streams naturally change course through erosion, flooding, oxbowing, and beaver or ice damming, and riprap, which makes stream channels permanent, doesn’t allow this process to happen. And, Sprague points out, preventing streams from doing their job leads to elimination, not perpetuation, of habitat.
When restoration works, deer and elk, geese and doves return to the water and “big pigs,” as Fay likes to call them, hold beneath fallen cottonwoods and deep inside undercut banks; owners who fish are happy.
During both road trips-the one to visit Sprague and the other to see Fay’s ranch on the Ruby-my waders baked dry in the back of my truck, dying to be used. Both times, I wondered why I didn’t get to fish.
The Montana Constitution says all waters in Montana are held in trust by the state for the people of Montana. In the mid 1980s, Montana passed a Stream Access Law granting public access to these waterways for any and all recreational purposes, except camping and hunting. The law has been challenged on many occasions but has always been upheld. Unlike Colorado and Wyoming, where a landowner’s property line extends to the center of the river, in Montana, the line only extends to the high water mark. Although landowners can try to chase you off their water, legally, you have a right to be there. If I’d entered that spring creek on the Ruby by way of the river, I would have been OK. River access is tight on the Ruby, though, with few legal points of entry. And the relatively tame river is still large enough to require a boat if you plan on getting much beyond the put-in. So, while stream access is granted, the ability to get to the stream is not: fishing is a privilege, not a right. Thus, fishermen like me are often left looking for public land or an easement to access. Are there benefits when others improve fish and wildlife habitat that we can’t access for fishing?
“I argue vigorously that there are,” says Kiesling. “I don’t necessarily need access to know that what goes on there is a good thing. We’re all better off with cleaner habitats and better fisheries.”
