Eco-Restoration Journey Week 20: Bringing back the Atlantic white cedar

Living close to the ocean is great for a lot of reasons, including swimming, seafood and sunsets. But for tree fans, perhaps the best perk is that our fabulous peninsula is home to Atlantic white cedars.

A young Atlantic white cedar tree, one of hundreds planted at Harwich Conservation Trust’s Hinckleys Pond — Herring River Headwaters Eco-Restoration Project. 

These beautiful evergreen trees don’t grow everywhere. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Atlantic white cedars are only native to a narrow belt (about 50 to 130 miles wide) that runs along the coast from Maine to northern Florida, then west to southern Mississippi.

Hundreds of Atlantic white cedars were planted as part of the Harwich Conservation Trust’s (HCT) Hinckleys Pond — Herring River Headwaters Eco-Restoration Project, and the tree has played an important role in other nearby rewilding efforts.

Nick Nelson, Senior Geomorphologist and Northeast Regional Director for Inter-Fluve, the specialty engineering firm that is a key partner for the Hinckleys Pond project, said his first experience with cedar tree planting came when he worked on the Eel River Headwaters Restoration project in Plymouth. Completed in 2010, the groundbreaking effort was the first of its kind in the state.

A highly-prized tree

“Back then, we were trying to understand what these ecosystems used to be before the cranberry bogs,” said Nelson. The scientific consensus was that historically, many of these areas contained Atlantic white cedars.

Cedar trees were important to the Wampanoag Tribe and other indigenous peoples who lived in the region for thousands of years before European settlers arrived. Among other uses, cedar saplings were essential for the construction of wetus, traditional dome shaped dwellings.

A mature Atlantic white cedar swamp can be seen at Cape Cod National Seashore’s Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail in South Wellfleet. 

When European settlers arrived, they found the moisture-resistant wood of cedars made excellent lumber, and many trees were felled.  According to North Carolina State University research, there were an estimated 500,000 acres of Atlantic white cedar-dominated swamps and bogs in the country before European settlement, but due to subsequent harvesting and draining of coastal wetlands for agriculture and development, only about 100,000 acres remain.

Atlantic white cedars were also planted as part of HCT’s ambitious eco-restoration effort at the Robert F. Smith Cold Brook Preserve, which transformed a retired cranberry bog into a wildlife oasis. Planting cedars “has been carried through as part of our designs over the years,” said Nelson. “We’re trying to restore this globally rare ecosystem to some of the areas that they used to be.”

Where to see a cedar swamp

For folks who want to see what a mature cedar swamp looks like, it’s well worth a trip to South Wellfleet. A boardwalk section of the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Atlantic White Cedar Swamp Trail, winds through spectacular cedars, with the surrounding terrain varying between dry conditions and pools of water that hark back to a prehistoric scene.

Nelson is a big fan of the trail and mature cedar display. “It’s amazing,” he said. ” And that’s one of the places we’ve used as an example to help us understand what sorts of features we need for project design. The microtopography that you see there is what we’re trying to replicate with the Hinckleys Pond project.”

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 is 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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