Okefenokee World Heritage Site honor is a huge deal. Let’s meet the moment.

This powerful and rare designation comes with moral implications for citizens in the United States and across the globe to protect and preserve the refuge.

World Heritage Site status does not guarantee legal protection. In fact, UNESCO keeps a list of endangered World Heritage Sites. These sites have faced threats including natural disasters, mining, pollution, overdevelopment, armed conflict, and poaching or invasive species encroachment.

That is why state leaders must step up and pass legislation that will guard this treasure, its pristine nature and its diverse animal life including the American alligator.

The Okefenokee falls under the jurisdiction of U.S. Fish and Wildlife and Georgia and Florida environmental authorities.

In Georgia, state leaders now have a new reason to act when they didn’t in the past.

Everyday Georgians can also do their part to champion World Heritage Sites such as the Okefenokee as advocates, educators and visitors

New governor and legislature should act to preserve Okefenokee

As recently as 2025, the Okefenokee habitat faced the threat of titanium mining.

That is why the AJC editorial board last summer lauded the Conservation Fund and its foundation partners for protecting a portion of the Okefenokee from the proposed mining.

The board also encouraged Gov. Brian Kemp and the Georgia General Assembly to support legislation to protect the refuge, which enjoyed broad bipartisan support. The governor did not support the legislation — a decision for which we criticized him. Thankfully, this inaction did not yield harm.

However, we wish the governor would have given his full-throated support to the UNESCO bid and state legislation, but that responsibility now falls to his successor.

Credit: Mike Luckovich

Credit: Mike Luckovich

When the next governor assumes office in January, he or she should work with the Georgia General Assembly to pass laws that make protecting the Okefenokee a priority.

On the first, in 2025, Georgia House lawmakers proposed the Okefenokee Protection Act (House Bill 561), which would have prohibited the state from issuing, modifying or renewing mining permits in the refuge. The bill failed to advance. Bring it back in the 2027-2028 legislative session.

On the point of forest policy, Charlton County Commissioner Drew Jones wrote a guest opinion column for the AJC in 2025 calling on the state to address issues such as timber being taxed at 100% of its market value at harvest.

The next governor and lawmakers should review this tax to ensure it still makes sense and then take appropriate action.

The World Heritage Site status also provides nonprofits, individuals and other organizations a world-class cause to raise funds for and promote the Okefenokee.

The designation isn’t permanent. UNESCO has delisted two sites in the past: Arabian Oryx Sanctuary in Oman in 2007 because of poaching and habitat loss and the Dresden Elbe Valley in Germany in 2009 due to the construction of a four-lane bridge.

This creates great urgency for Georgia citizens and state leaders to ensure that the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge remains pristine and of “outstanding universal value.”

It took 44 years, but Georgians should celebrate and take action

The proposed bid for the Peach State’s first World Heritage Site began during the Republican Reagan administration in 1982 and the Democratic Biden administration picked up the cause in the last few years.

It took 44 years to get here, but the sustained effort was worth it. The Conservation Fund expects this classification to double tourism in the next 10 years — from 800,000 visitors annually to between 1.4 million and 1.6 million — to give Charlton, Clinch and Ware counties a needed economic boost. It will elevate the swamp’s status as a wetland ecosystem that has been preserved for thousands of years.

Okefenokee means “the land of trembling earth” in the Muskogee (Creek) and Seminole Native American languages.

“Super proud moment for us, recognizing our ancestral lands, our words, our names still, the connection, the fact that the land’s going to be protected,” said Tracie Revis a citizen of the Muskogee (Creek) Nation at the UNESCO vote in South Korea.

She is right to be proud. This is a huge deal.

Not only is this designation the United States’ first in 30 years, but it also adds the Okefenokee to an esteemed list of 1,273 sites in 173 countries around the world that includes Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands and pyramids in Giza.

In addition to the next governor and legislature taking action, Georgians can help by visiting the Okefenokee and telling their friends and neighbors to do the same. Celebrate this treasure in Georgia.

UNESCO has entrusted us to preserve the Okefenokee for generations to come. It is now our responsibility to accept this mantle with intentionality, courage and enthusiasm.

This editorial reflects the viewpoint of the AJC Editorial Board and was written by Opinion Editor David Plazas. The editorial board comprises Publisher Paul J. Curran Jr., Editor-in-Chief Leroy Chapman Jr., Standards Head Samira Jafari, and Plazas. Email Plazas david.plazas@ajc.com and send letters of 250 words or fewer to letters@ajc.com.

A note of disclosure

The James M. Cox Foundation, the charitable arm of Cox Enterprises, provided financial and logistical support for the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge’s UNESCO World Heritage bid. The foundation was also part of a group of philanthropic organizations that helped finance the acquisition of property owned by Twin Pines Minerals, which had planned to mine the eastern edge of the swamp. Cox Enterprises owns The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.