Native Salt Marsh Plants and Animals: Flora and Fauna Respond to Restoration Projects

Cape Cod National Seashore has an active program of estuarine restoration for the nearly 2500 acres of Outer Cape coastal marshes altered profoundly since the construction of tide-restricting dikes and causeways during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Tides were restricted by roads and railways built across coastal wetlands, and by dikes intended to limit floodwater mosquito breeding and to promote lowland agriculture. With tide restoration under way since 1999 at 90-acre Hatches Harbor in Provincetown, and just beginning in 700-acre East Harbor (also referred to as Pilgrim Lake) in Truro, both native and introduced plants and animals are responding