The Okefenokee

Statement to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division regarding the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge and the Okefenokee Wilderness, March 20, 2023:

We write today to urge you to protect the great and magnificent Okefenokee Swamp, which was designated a national wildlife refuge in 1937; and in 1974, a national wilderness area, the latter category set forth ten years prior with passage by the U.S. Congress of the Wilderness Act, with “wilderness” defined as “an area where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.”  As such, and by law, a commercial mining project that would possibly weaken, damage, and destroy the Okefenokee is obviously and patently wrong, misguided, unethical, and probably illegal.  Specifically, the commercial strip-mining proposal of the Alabama-based “Twin Pines Minerals, Llc,” owned by “Green Fuels Energy, Llc,” would decimate Trail Ridge, which functions as a natural dam ensuring the Okefenokee’s health, wellbeing, and perpetuity.  The Okefenokee belongs to all of us and to our children and grandchildren till the end of all time.  We urge you to protect this sacred place.