12/02/2024

Why Cranberry Country is Turning into Wetlands

There's now a race to restore Massachusetts' wetlands

As the sun set on a November afternoon, Brendan Annett walked through a Mattapoisett, Massachusetts wetland preserve, greeting everyone who passed him by with the enthusiasm of a mayor at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.

Which he kind of was. Annett, who oversees conservation projects for the nonprofit Buzzards Bay Coalition, had recently finished work on the site known as Mattapoisett Bogs that, for more than a century, had been a working cranberry farm. As the industry waned here, the family who owned the land had sold it to the conservation group, which had set about transforming it back to the wetland it once was. Walking trails had just reopened to the public. But as ducks paddled in placid water and late-afternoon light turned the reeds and rushes to gold, it was easy to imagine it had been this way forever.

Southeastern Massachusetts has been cranberry country for more than 200 years, ever since a Revolutionary War veteran discovered he could transplant wild vines to a swamp near his home on Cape Cod. But falling prices, competition from cranberry growers in Wisconsin, Quebec and Chile, and climate change have made it increasingly difficult for the state’s farmers to continue on — and has led to a boom in conservation projects as some look for an exit strategy.

Please select this link to read the complete article from The Washington Post.