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Cumberland Island National Seashore and Wilderness is the largest undeveloped barrier island on the eastern seaboard and one of the gems of America’s National Park system. Massive live oak maritime forests, saltwater marshes, and a spectacular white sand beach—home to loggerhead sea turtles, are remarkable to experience. But Cumberland needs your help now. The National Park Service's (NPS) Visitor Use Management Plan (VUMP) seeks to maximize visitor numbers and recreation at the expense of the Island’s Wilderness and its wild inhabitants. NPS's plan is so off-base that it even proposes to allow bikes, including ebikes, in Wilderness.

The NPS must preserve the wild characteristics Cumberland Island was set aside to protect.

Once the private enclave of wealthy families, the federal government acquired the Island and established the Cumberland Island National Seashore 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.

Tragically, the National Park Service (NPS) has failed to keep the promise of a wild Cumberland Island. The agency allows excessive and unlawful motor and mechanized vehicle use in the Wilderness, it has prioritized saving structures rather than allowing nature to reclaim the Wilderness, and the list goes on.

Unfortunately, the NPS VUMP 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 allows a substantial increase in visitor numbers and amenities and a transition from a relatively primitive experience to a more developed tourist experience.  

For more details, visit the website of our friends at Wild Cumberland.

 

In our comments we urged the NPS to:

  • Prohibit all motorized and mechanized vehicle use except for those who have private existing rights. This includes access to the beach. If bicycle use is allowed they should be limited to the southern, developed end of the Island.
  • Maintain the current limit of 300 visitors per day to the Island.
  • Not establish commercial services on the Island.
  • Not create any new developed campgrounds in Wilderness. Instead, consider allowing dispersed camping limited to current numbers and monitor and restrict use, if necessary, to prevent resource damage, protect imperiled species, protect the beach, etc.
  • All NPS decisions should promote restoring a wild Cumberland Island, including allowing natural fire to play its role in the Wilderness. Wilderness visitors deserve to experience an authentic Wilderness, not one where natural processes are controlled by managers.
  • At the least, prepare an Environmental Impact Statement. The VUMP EA fails to offer any alternatives to their preferred alternative other than no action (which also fails to protect the Wilderness) and also fails to analyze cumulative impacts of visitor use on both Wilderness and wildlife. 

 

Photo: Jerome Walker

Contact Us

Wilderness Watch
P.O. Box 9175
Missoula, MT 59807
P: 406-542-2048
E: wild@wildernesswatch.org

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2833 43rd Avenue South
Minneapolis, MN 55406

P: 612-201-9266

Moscow, ID Office
P.O. Box 9765
Moscow, ID 83843

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