Massachusetts cranberry bogs are being given a second life as vibrant wetlands

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FILE - Workers adjust floating booms while wet harvesting cranberries at Rocky Meadow Bog, Nov. 1, 2024, in Middleborough, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, file)

CARVER, Mass. – About this time of the year, Jarrod Rhodes should be checking on the vines of cranberries that have grown on his bog for decades in southeastern Massachusetts.

Instead, he is watching a backhoe tear up the cranberry bog, exposing the dark peat underneath that will eventually become a meandering stream through the 32-acre (13-hectare) South Meadow Bogs Restoration site. The goal of the six-to-nine-month-long, $1.1 million project is to convert this bog to a wetland that should see the return of native plants like steeplebush and straw-colored flat