BROWNSTOWN, Mich. – Conservation experts say a 440-acre block of undeveloped land in Wayne County hosts a range of biodiversity and ecological richness worth more than any future construction project.

The Michigan Land Conservancy has a $6 million campaign to save a tract in Brownstown Township called Sibley Prairie, which contains a special ecosystem called a lake plain wet prairie.

In 2025, the nonprofit secured an option to buy the property if officials can raise the required money by the end of 2026. The conservancy and a coalition of environmental organizations have raised $500,000 for the campaign.

That leaves about 11 months to raise the remaining $5.5 million before the option expires. The property was nearly auctioned off last year.

Despite being a few hundred feet from busy Telegraph Road, the tract contains a globally rare prairie habitat conservationists want to save from significant development pressure across the entire Detroit metro region.

“Most people don’t realize that much of Southeast Michigan was actually prairie. From Detroit all the way to Northwest Ohio was a big stretch of thousands of acres of prairie,” said Jack Smiley, the conservancy’s president.

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Ecologists say Michigan’s prairie, savanna and barrens habitats have been diminished to small remnants; only 1% of the historic ranges of those ecosystems exist today. The lake plain wet prairie is rarer still among the remaining types of Michigan prairie habitats and considered “critically imperiled.”

“What we’re dealing with are small patches of historic prairie,” Smiley said. “It will need some restoration because there’s been invasive species moving in and we’ll have to manage that. But there’s still so many rare and threatened species on this property, in the Sibley Prairie area, that we just have to protect this.”

Native wildflowers like blazing stars, sundial lupine, prairie milkweed, asters and goldenrods are found at the site, along with native grass species like big bluestem and yellow prairie grass. So are rare insects like the state-endangered American bumble bee and the state-threatened Duke’s skipper butterfly.

In Michigan, the habitat type is found along Lake Huron and Saginaw Bay and is known to host a wide range of species.

“Prairies are famously diverse, and these lake plain prairies are a perfect example of very diverse systems that support these complex assemblages of plants, which then support really complex assemblages of insects and different animals,” said Jesse Lincoln, an ecologist with the Michigan Natural Features Inventory.

Sibley Prairie is the largest and highest-quality remaining remnant of a lake plain wet prairie in Michigan. It’s within the Brownstown Prairie State Wildlife Area and is considered a priority conservation area within a broader land preservation initiative across the bistate Oak Openings Region.

“It’s a community type that is especially associated with the Great Lakes and the recession of glaciers,” Lincoln said.

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Lake plain wet prairies are defined by both wet springtime grounds that shift to dry conditions by late summer. Seasonal flooding, changes in Great Lakes water levels and periodic fires were the environmental disturbances that helped shape the unique ecosystem over time.

Jeff Vornhagen of the Michigan Botanical Society serves on the fundraising committee for the Sibley Prairie preservation project. He said the plan is to seek donations and grant funding from nonprofit foundations and the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund.

He characterized the site as the last sizable piece of undeveloped property in Wayne County.

“This is preserving something that if it’s gone, it’s gone for good,” Vornhagen said.

“Not only are we trying to preserve a globally unique ecosystem, but this is sorely needed in the Detroit area, as far as just needing green space.”

More details about the fundraising campaign are available at savesibleyprairie.org.