Turtle light fight still burns bright at Buc-ee’s exit along I-95

No fix is imminent as Glynn County refuses to douse the lights, and proposals to remove the towers or switch to turtle-friendly bulbs remain in the discussion stages with “no timeline for next steps,” according to a Glynn spokeswoman.

The inertia aggravates turtle advocates on Georgia’s Atlantic coast who began pushing the county to enact light ordinances long before Buc-ee’s brought its giant highway rest stops to the Peach State.

“Disheartened, disappointed, disillusioned — take your pick,” said Catherine Ridley, director of the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project. “We’ve worked closely with Glynn County on lighting for close to a decade and the commissioners have told us they understand the problem. But that’s not being reflected in the decisions they are making or the urgency they are approaching it with.”

The county is skeptical about the lights’ impact on turtles and says they’re needed for vehicle safety. Alternative solutions, they add, would cost a lot of money.

Exit 42 was a lightly used interchange until Buc-ee’s bought property there. Now an estimated 15,000 additional cars pass through it daily, with Buc-ee’s operating 24 hours.

Eggs laid on Little St. Simons, Sapelo islands

In the first month of the nesting season, more than 125 turtles laid eggs on Little St. Simons Island and Sapelo Island beaches, across the low-lying marshlands from the highway interchange. The first hatchlings are expected in early July, and glow from the light towers could be deadly to the newborns by attracting them away from the ocean.

Turtle hatchlings instinctually crawl toward the lowest and brightest horizon as they leave the nest. Wildlife experts suspect the exit lights contributed to an uptick in misorientations along the two beaches the last two years as hatchlings mistook the skyglow for the reflection of the stars and moon off the ocean’s surface.

Those wandering babies prompted state transportation and natural resources officials last September to encourage Glynn County, the owner and operator of the tower lights, to turn them off during nesting season. An exit lighting review convinced transportation officials that street-level poles cast enough light to ensure traffic safety at the interchange. Those lights would be below the tree line and not bother the turtles.

Credit: Photo courtesy of the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project and One Hundred Miles

Credit: Photo courtesy of the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project and One Hundred Miles

Glynn County balked. In a note to transportation officials, the then-commission chair questioned the notion that the lights were causing misorientations, challenging data prepared by one of the country’s preeminent turtle experts, Mark Dodd with the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Glynn officials also cited traffic safety concerns. The Exit 42 interchange had been reconfigured in early 2025 for the Buc-ee’s. A series of roundabouts routed traffic between I-95 and the sprawling travel center, which opened July 1, 2025. Buc-ee’s 120 gas pumps and a 74,000-square-foot store see so much traffic that there are multiple entrances with way-finding signs that must be clearly visible for motorists after dark.

Drivers just weren’t familiar enough with the new traffic flow, and every watt of light counted, county officials said.

Buc-ee’s hasn’t taken a position on the lighting issue. The Texas-based company didn’t respond to a request for comment for this story and last year declined comment. Glynn officials have said there are “no outside influences or undisclosed factors” involved in the lighting decision.

There is no mention of the Exit 42 lights in more than 500 pages of emails between county staff and Buc-ee’s representatives dating back to January 2025 that The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reviewed. Those communications were obtained under the Georgia Open Records Act.

Alternatives floated but cost money

The Exit 42 tower lights bother the turtles, wildlife experts say, because their eyes register bright, white light clearly. Light of longer wavelengths, which humans see as amber or red, is invisible to them. Turtles live nearly all of their lives in water and have no need for cone photoreceptors in their retinas to detect color.

Also, turtle vision is vertically narrow, so any light they see along the horizon acts as a beacon.

Those biological realities opened up possibilities beyond simply turning off the lights.

One was to replace the towers’ mercury vapor bulbs with amber-tinted LEDs. County officials met with state transportation leaders in February about “modernizing” the tower lights at Exit 42 as well as the other three Glynn interchanges along I-95.

Credit: Sarah Peacock

Credit: Sarah Peacock

The county’s proposal earlier this year, obtained via the Georgia Open Records Act, called for replacing the mercury vapor bulbs with LEDs. The request also pitched the state transportation department on redesigning the light array at the exit and removing the towers completely to address the “public criticism.”

Lighting upgrades would cost $400,000 per interchange, the county estimated, and their proposal requested the state share in those costs.

County and state officials say they discussed several options during their February meeting, including the turtle-friendly bulbs and the lighting redesign. But there’s been no movement on the project — and no email communication between the county and the state on the topic — since the meeting.

A Glynn spokesperson said the county’s understanding is the transportation department is “reviewing a range of possibilities as they refine the redesign” and “no changes have been requested of the county.” A Department of Transportation spokesperson said the agency has not agreed to do a redesign, is not considering doing one and that any lighting change decision is Glynn County’s to make.

Credit: Photo courtesy of the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project and One Hundred Miles

Credit: Photo courtesy of the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project and One Hundred Miles

Lighting debates predate Buc-ee’s arrival

Caught in the middle of the bureaucratic disconnect are the turtles — and not for the first time.

The Exit 42 issue isn’t the only Glynn County light fight the reptiles have lost this year. A long-sought Glynn County lighting ordinance revision, meant to improve the turtle nesting environment on St. Simons Island and Sea Island, was to be adopted this spring after seven years of negotiation.

But 11th-hour opposition led by beachfront residents citing property rights killed the rewrite. The Glynn County Commission declined even to set up a task force to further work on the ordinance revision, ending the bid for changes.

The 2026 nesting season is off to a strong start, with more than 1,200 nests along Georgia’s 100-mile-long coast already. Dodd, the state’s turtle expert, is hopeful the natural sand movement on the barrier islands since last September has heightened dunes and will reduce misorientations once hatchings start next month.

Ridley, of the St. Simons Island Sea Turtle Project, and other conservationists, including Dodd, say they will continue to lobby for turtle protections. Dialogue with county officials has been amicable, Ridley said.

But given the turtle’s crawl pace of addressing the Exit 42 lights, she’s advocating for the stopgaps suggested by state officials last September. Those included extinguishing the lights for the remainder of nesting season, or short of that, painting the fixtures around the bulbs and the east-facing sides of the tower poles. That would direct more of the light toward the ground and reduce the reflection toward the beaches.

“We have simple solutions at our fingertips that will help address a very significant conservation problem, but instead Glynn County has put their heads in the sand,” Ridley said. “We can solve this problem tomorrow.”