"The ‘Rewilding’ of a Century-Old Cranberry Bog"

"Scientists are turning a cranberry bog back into coastal wetland. The experiment is seen as a path for dormant bogs and another chance for vanishing habitat."

"PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The alewife, a type of river herring, wriggled against the current, a 10-inch streak that disappeared from view as it rounded a bend in the stream.

It was a normal springtime pilgrimage for the fish, which lives in the ocean but swims upstream to spawn. But this time it was happening in a surprising place — a waterway that was not here two years ago.

For more than a century, this place, called Tidmarsh Farms, was the site of a cranberry bog, a thick carpet of the fruit’s vines atop a bed of sand with straight water channels. But commercial cranberry farming, which began in Massachusetts, has flagged here in recent years as prices dropped and different farming methods emerged elsewhere. Unfolding here now is an ambitious project: turning a cranberry bog back into the coastal wetland it once was."

Jess Bidgood reports for the New York Times July 4, 2017.