Eco-Restoration Journey Week 5: Welcome visitors and unwelcome willows

Spring finally got the message and delivered a warm sunny day for our weekly site visit to the Harwich Conservation Trust’s (HCT) Hinckleys Pond – Herring River Headwaters Eco-Restoration Project at the corner of Headwaters Drive and Rt. 124 (Pleasant Lake Ave.).

There was also a bit of extra excitement in the air, because some of HCT’s valued partners on the project were on their way to take a gander at all the work that has been done since the first excavator scoop on March 25.

The project has been in high gear for more than a month, and the morning meeting in the barn has started to feel like a get-together of old friends. It’s always a pleasure to chat with the folks from Inter-Fluve and SumCo Eco-Contracting, the experts who have partnered with HCT on the design and construction of the project. They were also instrumental with the recently completed Cold Brook Eco-Restoration.

And with bright sun illuminating the project, it was easy to see that significant progress had been made.

“We should be largely done with Jenkins bog by the end of this week,” said Jonathan Gawrys, Team Lead for SumCo Eco-Contracting.

This is the main retired bog area that folks see when they’re driving by the project along Route 124, across from Cape Cod Regional Technical High School.

Much of the work has involved removing a layer of sand that had been applied over the last century to stimulate cranberry vine growth. In the winters, when the temperature dipped below freezing for a couple of weeks, the farmer would flood the bogs and the water would freeze creating a sheet of ice. That ice provided a platform on which to spread sand. When the ice melted, the sand would sink down across the vines, which increased productivity over the next few years.

Unfortunately, with warmer winters caused by climate change, bog operators haven’t been able to sand as often and bog productivity suffers. Warmer winters combined with labor shortages and a surplus of cranberries produced by much larger off-Cape bogs have been driving down prices, forcing some Cape farmers to consider leaving the industry. They can either develop the upland or consider a conservation future by selling to a local land trust like HCT. That’s just what the Jenkins family did to create a legacy of conservation land and keep the property open to the public who enjoy the nice wide trails around the wetland areas.

The SumCo crew has also been roughening the surface (a process called microtopography), to create a landscape that is more in line with a natural wetland area, producing a varied, complex habitat where a diversity of plants and animals can thrive. This same approach was applied at the Cold Brook Preserve. Botanists from the Woodwell Climate Research Center are studying the rebounding plant diversity there. At the Hinckleys Pond sites, APCC and Inter Fluve are studying plant life before and after restoration.

Unwelcome willows

“We did find a cluster of gray willows on the bog surface last week,” reported Gawrys. “Those have been removed and are now buried under a minimum of six feet of fill in a sand reuse area on the site.”

Gray willow is considered an invasive species by the state and can spread rapidly, displacing native plants.

Nick Nelson, Senior Fluvial Geomorphologist and Regional Director with Inter-Fluve, said there can be different removal and management protocols for different species of invasive plants, in an effort to control their spread.

“For the willows, if their roots and branches get in contact with water, they can sprout up anywhere,” said Nelson. “They are typically removed, roots and all, and then buried at least six feet underground in an upland area.”

This method allows land managers to know where the invasive species was buried and to keep an eye out for any resurgence of the plant. “If they pop up, they can be treated so it doesn’t have a chance to spread,” said Nelson.

Gawrys said phragmites and Japanese knotweed were likely the two toughest invasive plants they have battled during their years of eco-restoration work in the Northeast.

The road ahead

Once the crew wraps up work on the Jenkins bog, they will relocate operations to the Warner bog, a retired bog within private property located on the other side of Hinckleys Pond. Sand removal and microtopography work in that area are expected to take about three weeks.

In the near future, trail work will be getting underway at HCT’s Hinckleys Pond – Herring River Headwaters Preserve. A bit further along the timeline, plans call for the construction of a short boardwalk, which will enhance recreational and nature-watching opportunities.

A reunion with project partners

Once we finished the meeting, it was time to meet a cheerful group of folks from organizations that have partnered with HCT on the project. We could see them gathered among the Cape Cod Rail Trail, which is a great spot to watch the work unfold.

The group included representatives from HCT, Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Inter-Fluve and SumCo Eco-Contracting.

The funding partners for the project are HCT, APCC, NOAA, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), EPA’s Southeast New England Program (SNEP) and the Brown family.

“We’re thrilled to have everyone here,” HCT Executive Director Michael Lach told the group. “We are grateful to our wonderful partners that make these complex projects possible and we look forward to all the different wildlife that is going to call this beautiful place home.”

Nelson provided an overview of the project and added that “we really appreciate the support from APCC and NOAA and all the agencies that on this and many other projects. It’s really exciting to see the evolution of these projects, since the first one in Plymouth back in 2009.”

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, 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.

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.

Revisit our eco-journey chapters: Here are the links for week one, week two, week three, and week four.

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