LaFramboise Island was historically forested with cottonwood trees, but after upstream dams changed the Missouri River’s water flow in the mid-1960s, this sandbar island’s habitat shifted to include eastern red cedar, Rocky Mountain juniper, green ash, and Russian olive. Native cottonwoods remain part of the landscape and once flourished because of the river’s natural flooding, but regulated flows mean the Missouri River no longer floods the island and conditions no longer favor cottonwood regeneration. The island provides winter day-roosting habitat for bald eagles, which are commonly seen perched in large cottonwoods along the island’s outer edge watching for fish or waterfowl, and in February and March 2003 a pair of mature bald eagles built a nest on the downstream river side and stayed near it for several weeks. Three bat species have been documented there—the little brown bat, big brown bat, and silver-haired bat—and several individual bats were radio tagged and tracked to roost sites. In South Dakota, the island is also significant for a history reaching back to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, when the LaFramboise family farmed its nutrient-rich soil and helped settle the Dakota Territory, and today it is managed as a nature area with trails, wooded cottonwood and cedar tracts, natural prairie areas, and abundant wildlife.