Borah Creek Prairie

In 2009, The Prairie Enthusiasts, Mississippi Valley Conservancy, and Driftless Area Land Conservancy, with funding from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the WI DNR Knowles-Nelson State Stewardship Fund, procured 138 acres of this site near Fennimore, WI. It was immediately designated a WI State Natural Area. In 2010, title was transferred to The Prairie Enthusiasts.  It has since been managed and cared for by TPE.  In 2013, another 43 acres were added to the preserve for a total 181.  The preserve consist of 10 acres of high quality remnant dry and dry-mesic prairie, 17 acres of former cropland planted to prairie vegetation, and 5 acres of overgrown oak savanna. Most of the rest of the preserve is former pasture with varying amounts of native prairie vegetation that survived the grazing, including a large population of the Federally Endangered prairie bush-clover. Surveys of this property have found such rare prairie specialist as woolly milkweed, prairie Indian-plantain, Hill’s thistle, wild quinine, and prairie turnip. Rare and declining grassland birds detected using the area include upland sandpiper, eastern kingbird, brown thrasher, dickcissel, eastern meadowlark, grasshopper sparrow, and bell’s vireo.