Cumberland, interposed between the Georgia coast and the pounding Atlantic, is among the largest undeveloped barrier islands in the world. It's both the largest and southernmost of Georgia's barrier islands and is accessible only by boat. Much of Cumberland is wild. Our challenge is to ensure that the National Park Service manages it to keep it the wild place that it is.
About Cumberland Island
Cumberland Island is a long thin strand of surprising wildness off Georgia's Atlantic Coast. Its 40,000 acres make it one of the largest undeveloped barrier islands in the world. The National Park Service manages the island which is 17 miles long and varies from just under two to just over three miles wide.
The northern half of the island includes 8,840 acres of designated Wilderness. The National Park Service (NPS), which manages this unit of the National Park System, classifies another 11,718 acres as "potential" wilderness. That management determination requires the agency to manage those acres in such a way as to protect their Wilderness qualities until the Congress can act.
Park Service's Challenge
The NPS has a difficult management challenge on Cumberland. Only around 47 percent of the island is public land; the remainder is either private land, state land or land the NPS holds on our behalf but on which private parties have rights of use and occupancy. And those rights of use and occupancy include rights of access, even motorized access under certain conditions.
In addition to trying to strike a reasonable balance between public values and private rights, and allowing remaining residents reasonable access, the Park must ensure that its own use of motorized vehicles is reasonable and reasonably warranted. It has failed on both counts. When the Wilderness was designated, the legislation allowed the Park Service to use the main road through the Wilderness for certain administrative purposes, with the clear proviso that the use would be phased out over time. Far from being phased out, the use has continued and grown.
Our Position
The Wilderness Society advocates that the NPS use the main road only in emergencies and otherwise keep its vehicles off the road. There is a dock at Plum Orchard that the NPS could use much more than it does; from there, foot access into the Wilderness is easy. In short, we think the agency has used motorized access as a matter of convenience, not of necessity. Wilderness demands a higher standard.
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