More than beautiful, the salt marshes along Sconticut Neck’s eastern shore are important to the Buzzards Bay watershed, supporting diverse wildlife and coastal fisheries, stabilizing shorelines, and significantly improving water quality by filtering pollutants.

As existing wetlands, they have long been protected. But knowing what we know about climate change, potential hurricane surges, and sea level rise, future conservation planning must focus not on where the salt marshes are, but where they will go.

As climate change continues, the ocean will overcome the Bay’s existing saltmarshes in the coming decades, including Fairhaven’s verdant Wide Marsh, essentially drowning many of them. The hope is that the rise will be slow enough that Wide Marsh will be able to migrate inland. All it needs is undeveloped land where it can relocate.

Thanks to the work of the Buzzards Bay Coalition and the vision of local officials, farmland and coastal land protection have long been listed as top priorities in Fairhaven’s open space and master plans.

This plan to protect land behind the marsh began years ago with the Coalition’s purchase of Wide Marsh Farm in 2022 from the Jenney family. The plan is simple: Purchase the farm, place a conservation restriction on it, then re-sell it to another farmer—protecting the land but still allowing farming to occur.

In June, the Coalition purchased an additional parcel owned by the Trott family that takes up the lower part of the project’s footprint, where the Fairhaven Conservation Commission now holds a conservation restriction. The Coalition will soon close on a conservation restriction on the Viveiros Farm in between the Trott Woods land and the Wide Marsh Farm land, protecting it for farming.

More than $1 million of United States Department of Agriculture funding was used to purchase these lands. The project required no funding from the Town of Fairhaven; the Coalition raised all funds through Federal and State Grants and private donations.

We’ve already seen benefits from this collaboration with improved water quality and reduced pollution to Nasketucket Bay: two old septic systems were removed, and two existing houses and two new ones will hook up to Fairhaven’s municipal sewer line in the future.

The Wide Marsh project preserves the town’s coastal farmland, salt marshes, and even its historic stone walls, all of which contribute to the character of Sconticut Neck. The Coalition plans to eventually create and maintain new walking trails for use by the general public to enjoy this land.

An overview of Wide Marsh Farm, Viveiros Farm, and Trott Woods.