Eco-Restoration Journey Week 14: The big picture from a state expert

The state’s Division of Ecological Restoration (DER) was a key partner in the success of Harwich Conservation Trust’s (HCT) Cold Brook Eco-Restoration Project.

And DER’s support of local restoration projects has continued, including a $150,000 planning and design grant in support of HCT’s Herring River Watershed Eco-Restoration vision. The newest evolving restoration initiative is comprised of three sites collectively bordered by the Cape Cod Rail Trail, Great Western Road and old Main Street. The DER grant will get the ball rolling for exploring restoration options, which in turn will help HCT seek other funds to advance the next phases of design, permitting, and eventually eco-restoration construction.

The state grant funding was awarded through DER’s Cranberry Bog & Wetlands Restoration Program, which seeks to restore abandoned or retired commercial cranberry bogs back to native wetlands and streams. In a sense, it’s “green engineering” in harmony with nature to improve water quality, make healthy habitats, and enhance the visitor experience to these future conservation destinations.

This week, we were delighted to chat with Eric Ford, a DER Ecological Restoration Specialist. Ford was a huge asset to the Cold Brook project, providing technical assistance and design guidance.

Ford is an excellent source for information about the benefits of rewilding former cranberry bogs, a process now underway at HCT’s Hinckleys Pond — Herring River Headwaters Preserve at the corner of Headwaters Drive and Pleasant Lake Ave. (Rt. 124). The following interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.

HCT: How does rewilding retired cranberry bogs bring back biodiversity, and what are the challenges?

Eric Ford: There are generally three impairments that we see on all sites. The first is sand placed over the bog surface that stimulated root and shoot growth for the cranberry plants and suppressed weeds. The sand was added incrementally over the years when the bog was in production, and it can end up being three feet deep or more.

So, what happens is you have a separation of the ground water from the soil surface and because of that, the surface isn’t wet anymore. If you were to just leave the site alone and walk away, it may not revert to a wetland, which it originally was.

The second thing we see a lot of on these retired bogs is structures: dams, dikes, and water control structures that affect the movement of water and organisms across the landscape. That kind of fragments the landscape. So removing those obviously has a benefit.

And then the last thing with the cranberry bog sites is that the manipulation to make the bogs created an oversimplification of the landscape. It’s super flat, usually with lateral and perimeter ditches designed to move water onto the site and off of the site as quickly as possible.

So, if we want to revert the (ecological) trajectory back to wetland, we have to undo all those stressors on the site.

HCT: What are the economic forces in the cranberry industry that might make it difficult for Massachusetts growers, and perhaps lead them to discontinue farming?

Eric Ford: At one time, Massachusetts was the world’s largest exporter of cranberries, and that has shifted to the north-central United States and Canada. Those bogs are large and usually not built on wetlands, so water control is easier.

There are also new varieties of cranberries that have higher yields. That increased production reduces the price that farmers can get per barrel, and that has a direct economic impact on the growers here. It’s particularly challenging for small growers.

HCT: What is the state Division of Ecological Restoration’s role in helping to restore retired cranberry bogs?

Eric Ford: We help build partnerships and act as a facilitator. If you’re a grower, you might not know much about eco-restoration. We can help build a team of partners and help get the funding in place. And we contribute funding and technical assistance through our Priority Projects program.

HCT: What inspires you about eco-restoration projects?

Eric Ford: I love building partnerships and working with the great people who come together on a project. It’s also really cool to see the resilience of nature. When we make these changes to a system it really unlocks nature and can bring about a bright sustainable future.

HCT: You provided technical and design assistance for the Cold Brook Eco-Restoration Project. What was it like working with the Harwich Conservation Trust?

Eric Ford: Anytime an organization gets involved with eco-restoration, it’s kind of a leap of faith. HCT Executive Director Mike Lach and Tom Evans, HCT Board of Trustees President, put a tremendous amount of trust in us at DER to help them, and we were lucky to have a great consultant with Inter-Fluve and Nick Nelson (Senior Geomorphologist and Northeast Regional Director for Inter-Fluve), who grew up in Harwich.

It takes a lot to make the commitment to do this. It’s not a small amount of money to get it done. The Trust had to find funds and ask for donations. There’s a lot of bootstrapping that has to happen. And they were great in doing all that they could to make the project such a success.

Project refresher

The Hinckleys Pond – Herring River Headwaters Eco-Restoration Project includes the restoration of two retired cranberry bogs that bookend 174-acre Hinckleys Pond in Harwich, located at the headwaters of the Herring River estuary. Hinckleys Pond is also connected by streams to river herring spawning habitat in Long Pond and Seymour Pond.

By the late 1990s, much larger off-Cape bogs were producing an extra supply of cranberries that caused the price to fall. This shift in the industry makes it more difficult for local growers to continue farming. Some are looking to exit the industry.

Farmers have a choice. They can either sell their properties for conversion of the upland to subdivisions which can cause water quality changes and end up closing off public access to the land. Or they can seek a conservation future by selling to local land trusts and towns. In 2021 at Hinckleys Pond, the Jenkins family finished their farming chapter and chose to sell their 31 acres to HCT for the next chapters of conservation and eco-restoration.

The Brown family, who owns a retired bog on the other side of the pond, is also partnering with HCT on the project. The collaborative eco-effort will increase biodiversity and restore freshwater wetland habitat as well as enhance opportunities for everyone to enjoy the trails, views and wildlife watching.

The eco-restoration project was funded by HCT donors, the Brown family, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Southeast New England Program (SNEP) Watershed grant, EPA National Estuary Program Coastal Watershed grant under cooperative agreement with Restore America’s Estuaries, Massachusetts Department of Conservation & Recreation MassTrails grant, foundation funds through the Association to Preserve Cape Cod, and a Transformational Habitat Restoration & Coastal Resilience grant through the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration.

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