OKEFENOKEE SWAMP, Ga. (GPB) — Boating on a canal at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is like gliding on black glass. Needles falling from pine trees above darken the coffee-colored water below, creating a mirror image of the sky broken up by the bubbling of fish or the surfacing of alligators.
And the wake of a boat.
Josh Howard sits on a bench of the tour boat. He was raised in nearby Charlton County, one of four Georgia and Florida counties in which the refuge sits.
It’s peaceful here, and he likes it that way.
“You’re not going to have cellphone service,” Howard said. “You don’t even see the glow of the cities.”
The refuge is like a dark spot on a map, so massive that its coverage more than doubles all five boroughs of New York City. It’s the largest subtropical freshwater wetland left in the entire Northern Hemisphere.
And it’s about to get some more activity.
(Stacy Funderburke/The Conservancy Fund)
Later in July, a United Nations committee will likely convene in South Korea to officially inscribe the swamp as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, alongside 26 other sites in the U.S. including Yosemite and Yellowstone. Much of the efforts behind the designation is to shine an international light on the site and in doing so, draw in more visitors.
“A doubling of visitation over the next five to 10 years is what we expect to see,” Okefenokee Swamp Park and Okefenokee Adventures Executive Director Kim Bednarek estimates. “We want to celebrate it, we want to share, and we want to educate the public on what makes it so wonderful.”
‘Almost 100% intact wetland’
There aren’t many places left that can be called pristine, but the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge might just be one of them.
Its water prairies, flooded forests and marshes, home to over thousands of plant and animal species from black bears to rare gopher frogs, are still largely still intact.
“This is almost exactly how it was hundreds of years ago,” Okefenokee Swamp Park Hunter Barber said. “This is almost 100% intact wetland.”
Barber’s family has lived around the swamp for seven generations. They were here in the 1800s, when engineers tried to dig canals through the black mud.
“It’s not like people haven’t tried to develop it and change it; they just haven’t been successful,” Howard said. “They had an idea for a ship canal to run through to the Gulf [of Mexico]. There was an idea to build a scenic byway.”
But the swamp sits like an elevated bowl of water, protected by a ridge to its east. So when canal diggers tried to create routes to the Gulf, water didn’t flow how they intended.
Since they couldn’t build through it, the country decided to protect it. Conservationists lobbied President Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish the swamp as a national wildlife refuge in 1937. Since then, the land has been managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the land has stayed more or less secluded.
“If you come out and do a camping trip, you’re going to see the stars like you’ve not seen in a long time,” Barber said.
Still, development has encroached from its edges. Last year, titanium dioxide mining company Twin Pines attempted to acquire land at the eastern ridge, a move that was blocked by the Conservancy Fund.
‘It deserves to be known’
The recent mining attempt and UNESCO designation both brought increased attention to the swamp.
“We’re getting a lot more press,” Howard said.
The park sees about half a million visitors each year, according to Bednarek. But Barber says business has been slow.
“We’d have folks from all different nationalities come out,” Barber said. “When COVID hit, that’s never really bounced back.”
The UNESCO designation could soon change that.
The designation would mark the end of a process that began over four decades ago in 1982. Recent efforts from nonprofit Okefenokee Swamp Park helped raise $800,000 to put together a team of scientists and application for the nomination to go forward.
“That money is 100% dedicated to ensuring the inscription is successful,” Bednarek said.
Much of that funding effort is to attract more visitors, she added. And it appears surrounding towns are already responding.
A new Okefenokee development authority formed last year across the three towns where you can enter the swamp. A few new hotels and a handful of chain restaurants are already popping up, Waycross Tourism Manager and Okefenokee Development Authority member Patricks Simmons said.
“The year before last we had a Fairfield Inn open,” said Simmons. “We got two new Wawas; that’s pretty significant. I got to feel like some of that is driven by the designation.”
Keeping the peace
But UNESCO vice-chair and Director of Culture Mike Robinson said that development has to be balanced against the real purpose of the designation
“The bottom line of the World Heritage Convention is it’s not about attracting tourists,” Robinson said. “It’s about protecting the heritage.”
Still, Bednarek and the rest of the Okefenokee Swamp Park team are confident the swamp will remain protected. Just about 2% of the swamp is accessible via water trails, she said.
“I don’t think we’re going to be an Orlando or anything,” Howard said. “I’m hoping with World Heritage Site status, we are going to be able to share it more broadly with people all over, because it deserves to be known and protected even more than we’ve done.”
If the UNESCO listing gets more people to see this quiet, dark, last-of-its-kind watery corner of the world, that’s good, he said.
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