Clarion call for contributions by December

“Just 15 miles from the bustle of downtown Detroit exists a rare ecological oasis bursting with biodiversity: the largest remaining lakeplain prairie in the entire state [of Michigan], a landscape found almost nowhere else on earth.”(Save Sibley Prairie Coalition)

There are people in Michigan who for decades have held out hope of saving Sibley Prairie. More importantly, they’ve worked to make that hope come true.

Denny Albert was among the first. He was Senior Ecologist for the Michigan Natural Features Inventory (MNFI) when he first set foot on the Wayne County site that would come to be known as the Sibley Prairie Complex. He recounts his first site visit:

“It is the morning of February 11th, 1991, as botanist Mike Penskar and I begin slip-sliding across the ice on the northern end of Sibley Road prairie. We had identified the Sibley prairie remnant as the largest remaining lakeplain prairie in Michigan during photo-interpretation for Michigan Natural Feature Inventory’s statewide prairie survey. It’s the wrong season for botanical field survey work, but we wanted scope it out as a potential mitigation site for wetlands destroyed by planned runway development at the nearby Detroit Metro airport.We are surprised by the number of plants that we can winter identify – big and little bluestem grasses and common prairie plants remain standing and easy to identify. And several rare plants; three-awned grass, short-fruited rush, Vasey’s rush, seedbox, appressed bog clubmoss, two-flowered rush, and tall nut rush all poke up through the ice, ready for verification at the UM herbarium. As we slip-walked between low beach ridges we encounter the best—but our least favorite— indicator of lakeplain prairie: mounds of the Alleghany mound ant (Formica exsectoides). During a warm-season survey we would be carefully avoiding shrubs and small trees from which foraging mound ants would drop and bite. But [on this winter day] we are able to sit comfortably on the stool-sized ant mound and eat lunch.

Our photo interpretation had been accurate, and we explore the northern half of the several hundred-acre tract until we encounter the 6 ft. chain link fence of the Fritz Industry, the largest landowner. The fenceline borders a drainage ditch, essentially the straightened channel of muddy Brownstown Creek. The persistence of the prairie landscape here some 200 years after the region was settled is largely attributable to the failure of such ditching and stream channelization efforts to provide adequate drainage for agricultural or residential development in broad sandy stretches of lakeplain like Sibley prairie.

While we are forced to turn back, our vantage point allows us to see far into the Fritz property, documenting that the open prairie landscape continues to the south. We have seen enough to recommend that the Sibley prairie complex be considered as a mitigation site for prairie wetlands destroyed by the Detroit Metro runway expansion.

Regrettably, Wayne County approved another site for the runway mitigation. But having realized the significance of the site, we returned to conduct further vegetation surveys. As the growing season unfolded, we documented over 100 plant species, including additional rare species like tall green milkweed, cross-leaved milkwort, and tooth-cup. The Michigan Natural Features Inventory zoologist later documented Duke’s skipper, a rare prairie butterfly.

By year’s end we had a better understanding of the extent of the Sibley Road prairie complex , which covered roughly 700 acres of prairie and swamp, with open oak forest on low beach ridges. It was confirmed to be the largest remaining remnant of a 16,000-acre prairie and savanna landscape mapped in 1818 by Bela Hubbard as part of the original government land survey.”

Albert left MNFI in 2004 for a position at Oregon State University. By then the site was on the radar of many Michigan natural resource agencies and nonprofit groups as an important site worthy of protection.

Property ownership patterns presented a particular challenge. The land occupied by the Sibley Prairie complex is characterized by hundreds of individual owners of small, narrowly configured parcels. As Albert explains, these are known as “ribbon farms,” and date back to settlement by the French. “Typically,” he notes, “they are a little wider than 100 feet and extend nearly ½ mile inland perpendicular to a river or creek shoreline. They provided the French settlers access to the river for fishing, trapping, and transportation, with their homes placed close to the shoreline, while upland portions of the land slivers were used for hunting supported small gardens and pear orchards.”

While it may have worked for the French, the configuration doesn’t lend itself easily to acquisition of easements or fee title for conservation purposes. Through the years, groups have managed to secure small but significant parcels for conservation. Among these is the 39-acre Sibley Prairie Nature Preserve – West Prairie Preserve, managed by the Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy. But efforts to preserve larger blocks of property have met with less success. Developments—condominiums, a golf course—were eating away at the edges of the Sibley Prairie complex. And the largest property at its heart was not for sale.

Until one day it was.

Jack Smiley, Founder and President of the Michigan Land Conservancy, was among those paying attention. In his long history in Michigan as a force for conservation, he had successfully undertaken many complex land transactions that required speed, including the remarkable 162-acre acquisition in 2021 that created BirdSong Nature Preserve east of Ann Arbor. He knew that agencies cannot always act swiftly enough to secure funds when conservation property is put on the market. But the nonprofit Michigan Land Conservancy was designed to be nimble.

“It was in August of 2025 that a large parcel—440 acres— was scheduled for auction,” says Smiley. We had a willing seller. It was our opportunity.”

The Michigan Land Conservancy quickly secured a loan for the $1 million needed to acquire an option to buy the property. The option gave them until the end of December of 2026 to raise the additional $5 million needed to purchase the land. It was game on.
The next step was creation of the 13-member Save Sibley Prairie Coalition, a core team dedicated to raising the needed funds to purchase the land.

Coalition partners include:
• Black to the Land Coalition
• Detroit Bird Alliance
• Ducks Unlimited
• Friends of the Rouge
• Grosse Ile Nature & Land Conservancy
• Legacy Land Conservancy
• Michigan Botanical Society
• Michigan Land Conservancy
• Rotary Club of Livonia AM
• Sierra Club – Southeast Michigan Group
• Southeast Michigan Land Conservancy
• Thumb Land Conservancy
• Wayne County Conservation District

“We finally see a path forward.” Jack Smiley, Michigan Land Conservancy (2026)

Their work is urgent. Changes in the surrounding Detroit-area landscape over the passing years have only served to reinforce the outstanding ecological significance of the site. At least seven endangered or threatened plant species have been documented in or near the property, including tall green milkweed, Sullivant’s milkweed, short-fruited rush, hairy angelica, three-awned grass, gentian-leaved St. John’s-wort, and grey birch, with an additional 16 species of Special Concern.

The animal side of the docket is equally rich. A diversity of rare and listed animal species utilize the array of habitats that comprise the property and adjacent lands of the Sibley Prairie Complex. These include but are not limited to the American bumble bee, Duke’s skipper butterfly, Blandings’s turtle and Pickerel frog. The site’s abundance of milkweed also makes the area an important site for Monarch butterflies, whose populations have declined by 80% since the 1990s.

“When I first saw the Sibley Prairie 25 years ago, I was just blown away,” says Jim Bull, a board member of the Detroit Bird Alliance, a coalition partner. Lakeplain prairie is such a unique landscape—flooded part of the year, dry part of the year—and has some very characteristic wetland plants, such as bog laurel. And this is a place where there were bison! I don’t know that we’ll bring back bison, but at least we can bring back the environment that they used to thrive in.”

“The hand of the pitiless reaper has never mown the luxuriant grass upon which fatten the wooly buffaloes of magnificent size and proportion.” French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in SE Michigan, 1701

As yet, there has not yet been a comprehensive inventory of bird species found on the site. But based on species documented at nearby sites that are smaller and less diverse, Bull expects that the 440-acre site will offer habitat for such grassland bird species as bobolinks, eastern meadowlarks, savanna sparrows, horned larks, American woodcock, dickcissels, common snipe, upland sandpiper, short-eared owls and northern harriers.

“You know, there are laws and ordinances for wetlands and trees, but there are no protections for native grasslands. And grassland birds are really in trouble. We are losing some really iconic parts of our avifauna, and anywhere we can manage to protect grasslands is to the good.”

The area is also within a critical migration corridor. Says Bull, “The Detroit River is only a couple of miles away, where two of North America’s four major migratory flyways—the Mississippi Flyway and the Atlantic Flyway—converge. To know why this site matters to birds, you have to see this larger context as well; it’s not only the breeding birds that are nesting here, but also those passing through seasonally that rely on this habitat.”

A national and international response

Thus far, the Save Sibley Prairie initiative has received contributions from over 2000 donors in 48 U.S. states, DC, Ontario and Manitoba. As of September 24, 2026, it had raised $4 million toward the $6 million needed to purchase the land. They’re putting out a clarion call for contributions from individuals to help get the project across the finish line. In return? The opportunity to walk the land, to know that it will not be lost to development, that it will continue to serve as home and habitat for a diversity of life, a place for migratory birds to rest and refuel on their journeys. The chance to be among those who kept lakeplain prairie a reality rather than a memory.

It’s important to note that the Coalition is not just counting on private individual donors to get them there. A grant proposal is under consideration for funding through the Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund. If approved, these funds would not be dispersed until late 2027, and would in part support needed restoration and management of the site. They are also looking into ways they might bridge any shortfall that remains as the option to buy expires. That said, they are determined to make their goal as excitement and donations continue to build.

Like other “long haulers” who have been interested in preservation of the site for decades, Denny Albert has been doing what he can to support the current effort being spearheaded by the Michigan Land Conservancy. He’s also been digging deeper into the long history of occupancy by the indigenous Wyandot people as integral to the existence of the prairie and savanna landscape. Burn management by the Wyandot and earlier Iroquois-affiliated tribes shaped the vegetation since 1400 or earlier, leading to dominance by oak openings or savannas and prairie. Their history is inextricably linked with the bison, the last of which was reported taken by hunting just east of the Sibley Prairie in 1882. There are lessons here, to be learned, says Albert, and recognition owed. If—or he hopes, when—the land is acquired for conservation purposes, that historic tribal engagement with the land can inform its future management.

The amazing lakeplain prairie he first laid eyes on all those years ago—a key piece of Michigan’s natural heritage—shouldn’t be allowed to just disappear. Says Albert, “This will likely be the last chance to secure the largest, most significant parcel of remaining prairie land in Michigan.”

It’s time. This we can do.

Find out more and make a contribution at SaveSibleyPrairie.org.

Thank you to Denny Albert for his major contributions to this story, and for his ongoing dedication to preserving the ecological integrity of wild places near and far.