Em’s Conservation Easement preserves one of Indiana’s rarest geologic features, a slump barrens. Its singularity makes it one of the conservation community’s highest priorities. Barrens, a globally rare natural community, are forest openings hosting wildflowers and grasses more typical of prairies. Characterized by poor, shallow soils, barrens feature fossiliferous limestone revealing life forms from millions of years ago. The steep angle of the slump barrens makes it susceptible to landslides.

Eighteen rare and endangered species have been found here, including the prairie wildflowers prairie dock, obedient plant, big bluestem, New Jersey tea, and rosin weed. The property is also home to Viburnum molle, a rare shrub listed as threatened by the state. This rare plant is one of the reasons the site has long held appeal to the conservation community — in 1946, eminent forest ecologist Dr. E. Lucy Braun collected this plant from the site and today, her specimen (pictured below) is housed in the National Herbarium at the Smithsonian Institution.

Other rare plants found here include smooth forked aster and barrens strawberry — both listed by the state as threatened. The woods also provide habitat for nesting cerulean warblers, listed as endangered by the state.

Decades of work went into protecting this 51-acre site in southeast Indiana near Cedar Grove. The easement was finally closed when Atira Conservation partnered with Central Indiana Land Trust, Inc., in Indianapolis, Indiana, to protect this priority landscape.

• Property Cost: $61,300
• Atira Conservation Funding: $13,000