How a Massachusetts cranberry farm became a thriving wetland

225 acres of wetland was restored, along with 3 miles of streams (Credit: Living Observatory) For more than a century, Tidmarsh Farms in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was used to grow cranberries. In 2010 it started a transofrmation that slowly turned it back into freshwater wetland.Tidmarsh Farms is a 600-acre property near the coast. According to NOAA Fisheries, cranberry farming had changed the land by draining its natural wetlands, cutting trees, straightening streams and putting barriers in place to control water. Sand was also repeatedly added over the natural peat, creating a thick layer over the original wetland.The restoration could not return the property exactly to what it had been before cranberry farming. However, work at Tidmarsh East eventually restored 225 acres of wetland habitat and more than three miles of stream channel.Before the restoration, fish such as alewife and blueback herring who were rarely seen in the former cranberry bog, were now swimming beyond barriers that had blocked their movement for more than 100 years.Restoring the wetlandThe land had been used as a cranberry bog since the 1890s. Like other cranberry farms in southeast Massachusetts, Tidmarsh was...