Windswept Bog, Nantucket Island MA: Watershed-scale Wetland Restoration and Research

The Nantucket Conservation Foundation (NCF) is very excited to report that the contractor for the Windswept Bog Wetland Restoration Project, SumCo Eco-Engineering, is finished with all earth-moving construction work. We plan to re-open the property at the end of March, once the trails have had a chance to dry out after a long, icy winter. This milestone completes two phases of construction which were preceded by four years of planning, permitting and fundraising. Construction activities for this project took place only during the winter dormant seasons (from November to mid-March) to avoid impacting rare plants, nesting birds and breeding wildlife on the property. Phase 1 construction began in January 2024 and was completed in March 2024, with ~14.0 acres of former cranberry bog cells restored to hydrologically connected wetlands. Restoration of the remaining bog cells (~26.2 acres) began in November 2024 and was completed in mid-March 2025.

The end result of this transformative project is that approximately 40 acres of cultivated cranberry bogs, which were isolated into 14 individual bog cells, are now restored to naturally functioning wetlands with diverse topography and connectivity between the former cells and adjacent wetlands surrounding the property. Boardwalks have been constructed to provide pedestrian access across the site and maintain connections to the vast Middle and Eastern Moors trail network on Nantucket. The restored wetlands will provide enhanced habitat for native flora and fauna, improve water quality exiting the property and flowing towards Polpis Harbor, and serve as an eventual pathway for marsh migration as sea level rise progresses.

We are so grateful to our dream team of partners on this project for all of their hard work: Jessica Cohn from Mass. Division of Ecological Restoration (DER), Michael Soares and Dr. Julianne Busa from Fuss & O’Neill, Inc. engineers, and Travis Sumner from SumCo Eco-Engineering. This project was funded by DER and generous grants from the the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service National Coastal Wetlands Conservation Grant Program, the Southern New England Estuary Program (SNEP) Watershed Implementation Program, and the Richard K. Mellon Foundation.

NCF's ecologists will be monitoring the site over the coming years to determine how vegetation communities, wildlife populations and hydrology respond to the completed restoration work. We look forward to sharing our findings with the cranberry bog restoration community!

For more information: https://www.nantucketconservation.org/science-stewardship/research-projects/windswept-bog-wetland-restoration/