Eco-Restoration Journey Week 2: A lesson from Nick Nelson

A cold Cape Cod wind was the unwelcome guest star at our recent site visit to the Hinckleys Pond – Herring River Headwaters Eco-Restoration Project. But good spirits were restored as we looked at the significant progress that had been made in just a matter of days.

Sometimes, understanding the complexities of eco-restoration can be a bit tricky for folks without an engineering background, so we sidled up to Nick Nelson, a senior fluvial geomorphologist with Inter-Fluve, an engineering firm that is partnering with the Harwich Conservation Trust (HCT) on the project. Inter-Fluve specializes in the restoration of wetlands, lakes, rivers and estuaries.

Nelson grew up in Harwich and is a graduate of Harwich High School. He played an instrumental role in the recently completed HCT eco-restoration project at the Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve in Harwich Port, and has a knack for explaining complicated engineering in ways that the general public can readily understand.

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, at the headwaters of the Herring River estuary and immediately downstream of river herring spawning habitat in Long Pond and Seymour Pond.

The project also seeks to improve shoreline habitat of Hinckleys Pond, which is also a herring spawning pond. The Brown family, who owns a retired bog on the other side of the pond, is also partnering with HCT on the project. The partnership eco-effort aims to increase biodiversity, restore freshwater wetland habitat and enhance recreational opportunities.

As we spoke with Nelson, excavators were digging into a former bog. “The first thing that they’re doing here is removing a chunk of the sand on top,” said Nelson. “It’s not getting rid of all the sand, but it’s getting rid of some of it. We’re getting the ground surface on average closer to where the groundwater level is. And then that final piece is the microtopography, turning over the remaining layers of sand.”

The word “microtopography” was new to us, so we asked Nelson to explain. 

“Generally, when you see more of a natural wetland area, a red maple swamp or a white cedar swamp, you’ll see high areas and low areas,” said Nelson. “And that’s just the variability in topography. And it allows for different plants to grow at different moisture levels.”

Creating that microtopography is a key part of the Hinckleys Pond project. “By building this complexity, you’re also building in resilience to wet periods and dry periods and you have a varied, complex habitat, with different plant species and different insects, different birds and other types of wildlife,” said Nelson.

There’s a lot to look forward to once the approximately six-month project is completed. But you may wonder how we got here in the first place.

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 made it more difficult for some local growers to continue farming.

In 2021, thanks to generous HCT donors, the Harwich Conservation Trust was able to purchase the 31-acre retired bog area from the Jenkins family. If not preserved, the forested upland along Headwaters Drive and Rt. 124 could have been converted into a subdivision which would have impacted pond health and closed off the popular spot to the public.

But now this exciting eco-restoration project is in full swing. During the construction process, the site is closed, for public safety and the safety of workers. The Cape Cod Rail Trail will be open as usual and it provides a great vantage point to watch the transformation of the site into a wildlife oasis.

And if you would like to see the awesome results of a recent HCT eco-restoration project, take a spin over to the beautiful Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve in Harwich Port.

The project successfully enhanced public access to the land including a half-mile wheelchair accessible trail and rewilded nearly a mile of stream and over 44 acres of adjacent wetland habitat. The restoration included the addition of ponds, a salt marsh, and native plant species. To learn more about the Cold Brook success and for a sense of the future eco-restoration results at Hinckleys Pond, please click here: Cold Brook Eco-Restoration Project – Harwich Conservation Trust