Cumberland Island National Seashore and Wilderness, off the coast of southern Georgia, is one of the gems of America’s national park system, but it needs your help now. Please ask the National Park Service to preserve the wild characteristics Cumberland Island was set aside to protect. Once the private enclave of wealthy families, the federal government acquired the island in the 1960s to save it from real estate development like that which had beset many of the barrier islands. In 1982, Congress designated much of the island’s northern two-thirds as the Cumberland Island Wilderness, or as potential wilderness in areas where private existing rights would eventually expire. Already quite a treasure, Cumberland Island was on the path to wild restoration and becoming one of the premier Wildernesses in the National Wilderness Preservation System. Unfortunately, the National Park Service (NPS) has historically and tragically failed to keep the promise of a wild Cumberland Island. It has allowed excessive and unlawful motor vehicle use in the Wilderness, prioritized saving structures rather than allow nature to reclaim the Wilderness, and the list goes on. The NPS is now embarking on a visitor use management plan (https://parkplanning.nps.gov/document.cfm?documentID=94027) for Cumberland. Unfortunately, the NPS proposal fails to maintain…”the primitive, undeveloped character of one of the largest and most ecologically diverse barrier islands on the Atlantic coast,” as the law intended. The plan appears geared towards a substantial increase in visitor numbers and amenities, a transition from a relatively primitive experience to a more developed tourist experience. Please tell the National Park Service to protect and restore Cumberland to a more wild and primitive condition, with development limited to the southern non-wilderness part of the island and only then to the extent necessary to administer the Island and protect natural and cultural values.



Please speak up now! A public comment period is open until May 12.



Send comments online: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=94027

