TrekEast Blog 20 Georgia Coast

 

I cycled half way across Georgia without seeing a living creature larger than a squirrel. Sadly, on this long stretch of highways 87, 19, and 341, roadkill was a common sight. Traffic did not seem too terrible the days I pedaled, but obviously it was terrible enough to kill many deer, birds, rabbits, armadillos, and opossums. Land along the Ocmulgee River – especially in the proposed Ocmulgee National Park south of Macon – had seemed rich, lush, and half-wild; but east from the river, industrial plantation forestry largely holds sway. You look across huge areas where trees are treated as crops, some swaths recently mowed down and pulped.

 

Then you reach the coast, and what a welcome sight are the salt marshes, barrier islands, and seabirds reeling on the ocean breeze! Georgia’s barrier islands are one of the great wild surprises for me during my trek up the proposed Eastern Wildway. Where the sand meets the sea in Georgia, a continental wildway seems possible even within our lifetime. Thanks to the good work of generations of conservationists, many of them federal and state biologists, much of the Georgia coast is still natural.

 

A bit more on middle Georgia first: The afore-mentioned Ocmulgee National Park and Preserve, Oconee National Forest, Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge and nearby watershed lands are the best hopes in the short term for real habitat preservation. If these public lands and waters can be reconnected, Georgia’s mid-section will accommodate wide-ranging species again. Too much of the state is now given over to industrial forestry. 

 

Some of the pine forests may be managed in a relatively sustainable way, but others are managed as heavily as cornfields. Rayonier has large holdings both here in Georgia and back in my home region of the Adirondacks; and this real estate investment trust has a generally good reputation, at least in the Northeast, for being willing to work with conservationists and striving for sustainability. Through my work at the Adirondack Council, I met several Rayonier foresters and officials, including Jonathon Spink, now here in Georgia, and they are all thoughtful open-minded people. With the right financial incentives, these folks would do the right thing. Unfortunately, financial incentives for land-owners in today’s economy encourage over-cutting and subdividing for development. Everywhere I go, it is clear that financial pressures need to be reversed so that private lands conservation is rewarded and exploitation taxed.

 

I’m on the coast now, though, and ought to focus here. Sapelo Island, while I visited, felt a lot like paradise: sunny and warm with gentle breezes and birdsong everywhere, huge live oaks draped with Spanish “moss” (a bromeliad, really, more closely related to pineapple than to moss) and vast cordgrass meadows stretching to the next barrier island.

 

To make it even better, Sapelo Island is largely surrounded by protected islands. Much of Georgia’s coast is buffered by barrier islands, of which the major ones are at least partially protected. From south to north, Cumberland, St. Simons, Wolf, Sapelo, Blackbeard, St. Catherines, Ossabaw, and Skidaway Islands are all at least partly wild and conserved, as state and federal public land holdings.

 

So, a great conservation challenge for Georgia and neighboring states in the coming decades is to restore and protect biological connections from Okefenokee Swamp National Wildlife Refuge in the southeast corner of the state, which connects to Florida’s Ocala to Osceola (O2O) wildway, northward through the barrier islands and ACE Basin, and inland up the major rivers, including the Altamaha, Ocmulgee, Ogeechee, and Savannah, and on to the Appalachians Mountains. Speaking of which rivers, I did cross the Altamaha on my ride to Sapelo and later spent awhile looking for old-growth cypress swamp in its lowlands. With help from biologist Andy Day, who is studying declining swallow-tailed kite populations in Georgia and South Carolina (more protection of bottomland forests needed), I found cypress swamp and tall pines, but not the old growth, this trip. I must return to try again. 

 

Meanwhile, wildlands friends want to share some beautiful writing from Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Crackerjack Childhood, about the elusive Murff Tract of old-growth cypress swamp. I’d hoped to visit Janisse and her partner Raven and their conservation farm north of the Altamaha River, but our schedules did not quite allow. Janisse kindly offered the accompanying excerpt from a longer essay on Altamaha forests and the great 18-19th century naturalist William Bartram (whom I am remiss for not citing previously).

 

 

Back to the barrier islands: Cristine LaPorte of Marine Debris Project had worked with Wildlands Network’s Conrad Reining and Ron Sutherland to plan my visit; and Fred Hay & family kindly hosted me for my stay on Sapelo Island. Fred may be the closest thing to a benevolent governor I’ll ever meet. He oversees management of the state’s land holdings and conservation and historic preservation projects on the island, and the state owns most of the island, on behalf of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Fred knows practically every permanent resident (about 70) and seasonal resident on the island; and he works nearly non-stop to assure their well-being and the well-being of the island’s wild inhabitants (excepting the feral hogs, which are wreaking havoc here as in so many Southeastern plant communities). Fred also works closely with federal officials, for much of the island and surrounding waters are designated the Sapelo Island National Estuarine Research Reserve.

 

Christine has done important work in studying and educating people about an under-recognized problem: dumping of trash in the ocean. The Marine Debris Project is documenting trash concentrations in ocean waters and on beaches, and educating people on the harmful ecological, as well as aesthetic, effects of ocean dumping. The plastic bags and Styrofoam cups out there are not just ugly, they also are choking wild animals. Thankfully, I found the beaches of Sapelo to be quite clean, likely because the good folks fighting the trash problem had already cleaned them up. 

 

Sapelo serves as field site or laboratory for many important ecological studies. In her beautiful and important book The Wolf’s Tooth, biologist Christina Eisenberg looks at the trophic cascades that affect saltwater marshes such as those around Sapelo. I don’t have the book with me and don’t remember the particulars, but suffice it to say, research on Sapelo has confirmed the wide-reaching ramifications of trophic cascades. When the crabs that eat the mollusks that eat the marsh grasses are removed, the saltmarsh vegetation suffers heavy over-browsing.

 

After introducing me to the island, Fred turned me loose with a mountain bike (my bike Jake being back on mainland, rightly disallowed on the ferry). There followed a delightful day of pedaling slowly along the island’s perimeter and several other roads and walking the Nature trail, photographing maritime forest and cordgrass meadows, picking up clam and whelk and horseshoe crab shells, and swimming along one of the wildest beaches I’ve visited in the East – miles of sand and waves and driftwood and seabirds with no cars in sight!

 

I also briefly visited Hog Hammock, a small well-kept town inhabited largely by descendants of slaves. Encouragingly, the Georgia DNR and Hogwood Hammock residents work closely together to conserve the natural and cultural heritage of Sapelo Island. May this fortuitous meeting of modern conservation with traditional cultures persist and inspire! May Sapelo’s wildness spread far, north and south along the coast, and inland up the rivers and beyond!

 

For the

Wild,

John