How a retired cranberry bog helped change the game for wetland restoration

PLYMOUTH, Mass. (AP) — Glorianna Davenport looks out at hundreds of acres of protected wetlands that were once her family’s cranberry farms. In her hands are laminated pictures of striking red cranberry bogs fed by razor-straight water channels. It’s hard to believe the land where she stands — full of sinuous streams, wildlife, moss and tall trees — once looked so different.

The land’s transformation, documented through a network of cameras and sensors, offers a playbook for wetland restoration as cranberry farms see slimmer profits from New England to Wisconsin because of climate change and other factors. The crop requires cold winters and plenty of water, but warmer temperatures and longer droughts are challenging harvest seasons.

Settlers in Plymouth were among the first to farm this native New England crop, and since then cranberry farms have been passed down through families for centuries.

“For many of these farmers, it’s their life savings and what they want to pass on to their children,” Davenport says. “It’s very complicated.”

Land that Davenport and her husband sold for restoration, now known as Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary, has set an example as the single largest freshwater restoration project in Massachusetts. Together with researchers, technologists and artists, she has created a living laboratory for wetland conservation science. The cameras and sensors provide live, publicly available data showing how the land is recovering its natural biodiversity.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between the MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing and The Associated Press.

Scientists who studied the sanctuary and an adjacent town preserve that’s also on her family's former farmland have published peer-reviewed studies documenting the changes. Lessons learned at Tidmarsh also helped the state launch a cranberry bog restoration program to connect farmers with nonprofits, which will either buy the land to restore it or help them take on a restoration project themselves.

Nature lovers have found other creative uses for the data: Once, birdwatchers took audio data of a bird call from several microphones to triangulate a bird’s location. Some users play wetland sounds for ambience in their bedrooms or offices.

To make restoration possible at Tidmarsh, over 20,000 native plant species were planted, several old dams removed and new waterways dug. Excavators sifted through sandy soil degraded by more than a century of cranberry production that formed a thick, hard layer over the natural freshwater wetlands the farms were built on.

Ecologists who believed cranberry farmland to be “ecologically dead” saw a wetland emerge instead. Within just a year of the restoration work that began in 2010, the sandy soil began to sprout.

A 2025 study of sites including the Foothills Preserve in Plymouth, land that was also once part of Davenport’s farm, by researchers at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and the University of Connecticut suggested the sand at Tidmarsh held long-dormant native seeds that just needed to be mixed with peat to germinate. Similarly, a 2021 study of Tidmarsh and other restored sites — including an earlier, smaller restoration in Plymouth known as Eel River Headwaters — found that water retention, soil health and microbial communities improved rapidly in just a few years.

“We discovered that former cranberry farms were actually highly restorable,” says Beth Lambert, director of the Massachusetts Division of Ecological Restoration.

The results of the transformation are on display during tours given by Mass Audubon, the conservation organization that bought and manages most of the land at Tidmarsh. Kim Snyder, the group’s education coordinator, leads groups ranging from birdwatchers to schoolchildren on field trips.

“A lot of Plymouth residents who have been here a long time remember it as a cranberry farm,” Snyder says.

Lambert says Tidmarsh helped launch the state’s Cranberry Bog Restoration Program, which can provide technical assistance and connect farmers to federal funding and conservation-minded buyers. Today, the state has helped complete construction on nine restoration projects totaling around 500 acres (202 hectares) and 10 miles (16 kilometers) of stream habitat. And 11 additional projects spanning another 500 acres are currently in planning stages. Lambert says she aims to have restored another thousand acres in the next 10 to 15 years.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture, the number of retired cranberry farms in Massachusetts grew by about 40% between 2017 and 2022.

It’s not a given that farmers will choose to sell their lands for conservation purposes. They can sell to other buyers to develop. Or they could let the land languish, taking decades to return to a wild, productive ecosystem.

“If we don’t conserve, if we don’t protect these lands that … owners are walking away (from), we lose it forever,” Davenport says.

A now-retired filmmaker, Davenport believes that the more research on wetland restoration she supports, the more knowledge can be communicated to the public — which could inspire other restoration projects launching elsewhere.

That belief led her to create the Living Observatory, a nonprofit group that describes itself as a “learning collaborative” for researchers, artists and others to document how former cranberry farms recuperate.

Through the network of sensors — which monitor conditions from soil moisture to temperature — and live cameras, the Living Observatory created a trove of data on how to restore cranberry farms. The project’s website now houses data from multiple restoration sites in the state beyond Tidmarsh.

Gershon Dublon, a data and systems researcher and director of the board of the Living Observatory, said researchers were grateful for a fairly simple tool: a centralized place to access the data and add their own. After the success at Tidmarsh, ecologists from as far as the Amazon rainforest reached out to Living Observatory asking for their input on how to deploy a similar bespoke sensor network in their work, Dublon says.

Wetland restoration projects and the knowledge gained from them are important tools in the fight against climate change, says climate scientist Christopher Neill at the Woodwell Climate Center. Wetlands work as barriers that soak up water from floods and storms, Neill says. According to scientists, extreme precipitation is becoming more common in the Northeast.

At Tidmarsh, one example of that resilience is sphagnum moss growing next to a mile-long boardwalk. Snyder likes to tell visitors about its antimicrobial properties. The moss also absorbs and stores planet-warming carbon dioxide.

“It’s a great property to show … the scope of restoration work,” she says, smiling.

The changes at Tidmarsh, a farm that had been owned by her husband's family, give Davenport hope. Native pitcher plants grow in clusters in the wetlands. Insects drone over running brooks. Her boots sink on the mushy, wet ground. Those were sounds she never heard on the farm before.

“The quiet goal is, can we make a dent in the amount of land that’s put in conservation?” Davenport says.

This story has been updated to correct that Davenport did not grow up on the farm and to clarify that she and her husband sold the land.

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Brian Mayton, a member of the Living Observatory and research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, reads research papers at his desk at MIT, Wednesday, March 25, 2026 in Cambridge Mass. (Jamie Jiang/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

A native pitcher plant grows in a wetland on a former cranberry farm at Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary, Saturday, March 14, 2026, in Plymouth, Mass. (Jamie Jiang/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

Brian Mayton, a member of the Living Observatory and research affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, holds a prototype of a sensor meant to collect ecological data from wetlands Wednesday, March 25, 2026, at MIT in Cambridge Mass. (Jamie Jiang/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

A Living Observatory sensor that measures temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure is seen at Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth, Mass., Sunday, March 15, 2026. (Jamie Jiang/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

Water flows down a stream at Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary, a restored wetland in Plymouth, Mass., Saturday, March 14, 2026. (Julia Vaz/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

A stream runs through Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth, Mass., Sunday, March 15, 2026. (Julia Vaz/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

Kim Snyder, an education coordinator at Mass Audubon, a conservation organization, shows sphagnum moss growing at Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth, Mass., Thursday, March 19, 2026. (Julia Vaz/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

Kim Snyder, an education coordinator at Mass Audubon, a conservation organization, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, Thursday, March 19, 2026, at Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth, Mass. (Julia Vaz/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

This photo shows the Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth, Mass., Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

Glorianna Davenport, founder of the Living Observatory, overlooks a stream cutting through Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary in Plymouth, Mass., Saturday, March 14, 2026. (Julia Vaz/MIT Graduate Program in Science Writing via AP)

Music lovers who have complained for years about Ticketmaster fees for concert tickets are surely reveling in a jury verdict Wednesday that found its parent company Live Nation has been running a harmful monopoly over large venues across the U.S.

But they will have to wait to see if the verdict leads to changes that make concerts more affordable.

Here are some things to know about the verdict in the closely-watched antitrust battle:

The lawsuit, initially led by the U.S. government under former President Joe Biden, accused Live Nation of smothering competition and blocking venues from using multiple ticket sellers. Days into the trial, however, President Donald Trump’s administration announced it would settle its claims against the concert giant. Some states joined the $280 million settlement, which still needs a judge's approval, but more than 30 states pressed ahead with the trial.

A federal jury in New York found that Ticketmaster had overcharged customers $1.72 per ticket in 22 states, which a judge could order the company to pay back. That could cost Live Nation hundreds of millions of dollars.

“The jury’s verdict is not the last word on this matter,” Live Nation said in a statement Wednesday.

The verdict brings no immediate relief for concertgoers. But the states view it as a step toward opening the market to other companies in a way that will enhance competition and could slightly lower prices.

“There might be a few extra dollars that will come trickle down at consumers who bought tickets through Live Nation,” said Shubha Ghosh, a law professor at Syracuse University who focuses on technology and antitrust law. “Whether ticket prices will go down in the long run, I think it largely depends.”

The next step will be determining the penalties. Beyond the hundreds of millions that Live Nation could be ordered to pay, possible sanctions could force the company to sell off some of its venues. Live Nation owns, controls booking for or has equity in hundreds of venues, and its subsidiary Ticketmaster is the world’s largest ticket-seller for live events.

Live Nation has continued to insist that it is not a monopoly.

The company predicted that once the remedies phase of the case plays out and any appeals are resolved, the outcome likely won’t be much different from the deal it reached with the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian told attorneys to meet and deliver a joint letter by next week that proposes a schedule for next steps.

A group of Democratic senators wrote to the judge Wednesday after the verdict, urging him to closely scrutinize the Trump administration's proposed settlement with Live Nation before he considers granting approval.

The deal includes a cap on service fees at some amphitheaters and new ticket-selling options that could allow promoters and venues to also use Ticketmaster competitors, such as SeatGeek, Eventbrite or AXS. However, it does not separate Ticketmaster from Live Nation, which was an original goal of the Justice Department's 2024 complaint.

U.S. Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono and Peter Welch argue the deal was “negotiated under suspicious circumstances” and does not go far enough in restoring competition or protecting customers, artists and independent venues.

The Justice Department has called the settlement a “win-win for everybody,” and Live Nation has said it is pleased with a deal that increases access for other promoters.

Associated Press journalists Wyatte Grantham-Philips and David Martin contributed.

FILE - The Ticketmaster logo is seen along the sideline of the field before an NFL football game, Sept. 15, 2024, in Jacksonville, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack, File)