A.D. Makepeace Co. has sold the state Department of Fish and Game about 245 acres of the company’s vast holdings in Southeastern Massachusetts, including 74 acres of cranberry bogs, for $3 million.

Linda Burke, director of marketing and communications at the Wareham-based developer and cranberry grower, said the land sale drops Makepeace back to the No. 2 position in the ranking of private property owners in the state. A family-owned forestry company in Western Massachusetts is now the state’s largest private landowner, she said.

The 245-acre site, which straddles the Plymouth-Wareham line, represented just a small fraction of Makepeace’s properties. Before the sale, Makepeace owned about 12,200 acres, including roughly 2,000 acres of cranberry bogs.

The property that the state purchased includes the upper waters of the Red Brook and a watershed around the brook – an area that state officials say is home to one of the most diverse fish and wildlife habitats in the state. In particular, the river is used by the sea-run brook trout, or salters, that live in fresh water from spring to fall before returning to near-shore ocean waters.

The Makepeace property abuts a 673-acre state preserve, which in turn abuts a 210-acre area owned by the Trustees of Reservations. The Makepeace deal means that the entire run of the Red Brook will flow through protected properties, from its headwaters to Buttermilk Bay.

Makepeace will lease the cranberry bogs and continue to harvest cranberries for the next five years before phasing out those operations, Burke said. She said Makepeace, which harvests about 150 barrels per acre at that site in a good year, has agreed to contribute equipment and labor to a Red Brook restoration project.

Makepeace is also busy in Plymouth developing a nearby parcel for a massive housing project known as “River Run” that could accommodate as many as 1,175 homes. Burke said a realignment of the nearby Bourne Road was recently completed, and Makepeace is about to embark on the construction of River Run Way connector road in the next few months.

Burke said she doesn’t expect Makepeace will start building homes at the River Run site until 2011. A satellite facility for the Old Colony YMCA and up to 60,000 square feet of commercial space are also planned for that development.