Ecological Restoration

Mass Audubon has a long history of using ecological restoration and management techniques to support healthy wildlife habitats and biological diversity.  

What is Ecological Restoration? 

Protecting land from future development and stewarding our properties for resiliency is important, but what happens when a piece of land is degraded, polluted, or overrun with invasives? That’s where ecological restoration comes in.   

Ecological restoration assists in the recovery of damaged, degraded, or destroyed ecosystems, and includes many kinds of methods to rejuvenate forests, fields, rivers, and wetlands. In collaboration with community partners and expert ecologists, we work to address past damage and restore degraded ecosystems back to a dynamic and self-sustaining condition so that they can benefit wildlife and people for years to come.  

Mass Audubon’s Ecological Restoration Program 

Our Ecological Restoration Program builds on our longstanding tradition of encouraging recovery of damaged and degraded ecosystems and provides a larger capacity to take on projects of significant scope and scale.  Our near-term focus is on projects with the biggest opportunity for positive impact including: 

• Wetland restoration on retired cranberry farmland 
• Salt marsh restoration  
• Urban wetlands restoration 
• Dam and other barrier removals from coastal and inland waterways 

Our Ecological Restoration Program staff brings decades of practitioner experience to the challenge of designing, permitting, and implementing aquatic habitat restoration projects.  Staff from other departments and programs bring complementary experience in forestry and grassland ecology, allowing Mass Audubon to consider restoration opportunities across the whole landscape of Massachusetts.   

Our work relies on close partnership with other landowners and organizations—we are grateful for the chance to work with others to restore ecological health and resilience in our wetlands, streams, forests, and fields. 

Impact of Ecological Restoration 

Completed projects will build climate resilience, improve biological diversity, protect water quality, and rejuvenate beautiful natural places for people to visit and enjoy. Integration with land conservation and habitat management practices will help us meet our Action Agenda goals for resilient landscapes. 

For more information or to discuss potential projects, please contact us.  

Take Action: Speak Up to Accelerate Wetland Restoration

The current regulation and permitting system makes doing beneficial wetland restoration work difficult, while allowing historic wetland degradation and destruction to remain in place, causing more damage every day. Through A Campaign to Accelerate Wetland Restoration Across the Commonwealth, Mass Audubon is working with our partners and members to help solve these challenges to benefit people and wildlife streamline permitting of wetlands restoration projects statewide.

Get Involved