It was four years and $4 million in the making, and this weekend, the 300-acre Great Neck Wildlife Sanctuary will be ready for the public to enjoy.

The conservation project was a collaboration of the town, Mass Audubon, the Wareham Land Trust, the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, the Sacred Hearts Seminary, and several abutting neighbors who were interested in preserving the land for future generations.

“For a town like Wareham, it’s big,” said John Browning, president of the Wareham Land Trust. "This is the biggest remaining parcel, near the water, to be saved."

The protected property, which can be accessed from a parking lot on Stockton Shortcut, off of Great Neck Road, features a two-and-a-half mile nature trail with views of Buzzards Bay.

The trail "will be something for the people of Wareham and the Southeastern Mass. region to use, and a place to connect with nature and experience nature first-hand," said Robert Wilber, Director of Land Protection for Mass Audubon.

In addition to traditional plant and animal life, the area is home to osprey and Eastern box turtles.

The project was made possible through a massive $2 million federal National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant, more than $700,000 in Wareham Community Preservation funding, and donations of conservation easements and money from neighbors. (The neighbors retain ownership of their land, but donated some or all of their rights to develop the property.)

The NOAA grant was "a foundation for the whole project," Wilber said. "If that piece weren't there, we really wouldn't have been able to fill that gap with another source."

And because the various neighbors stepped forward and agreed to donate conservation easements, the federal grant application was more compelling. The Great Neck Wildlife Sanctuary was number one on the list of properties qualifying for the grant, Wilber said.

The Rev. Stanley Kolasa, director of the Sacred Hearts Spirituality Center, called the project "a marriage of dreams ... so complimentary that it really became one vision."

Kolasa said that Sacred Hearts had always been interested in preserving its land, and had even turned down offers of large sums of money to sell parts or all of the land to developers.

Mass Audubon agreed to purchase a conservation easement on 95 acres of the 112-acre Sacred Hearts property, for a fraction of what the property is worth.

Sacred Hearts will use the money to expand on some of its existing buildings and build new ones in the area which can still be developed. The property won't look drastically different, Kolasa said.

"This is more than property," Kolasa said was one of the reasons that Sacred Hearts never accepted offers to purchase the land. "We're delighted about the trails. [The project] just binds the whole community together."

A grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Great Neck Wildlife Sanctuary will be held this Saturday, November 20, at 1 p.m. on the Sacred Hearts property.