Cumberland Island National Seashore

by Rick Zamore, SCA Program Manager
As an escape to a warmer environment in mid-winter, it’s hard to beat Cumberland Island National Seashore. This barrier island – the largest and southern-most of the Georgia Sea Islands, lying just north of the Florida border – is mostly a federally designated wilderness. It has 17 miles of beach and dunes on its Atlantic side, and thousands of acres of marine wetlands and salt marsh on its west side, facing the mainland across the Intracoastal Waterway. Two ferries provide the only access to Cumberland Island and on a weekday during the winter there are very few visitors. One can beach-comb or wander the oak forests in solitude, under a warm sun.

The beach is critical habitat for several species of sea turtles -- primarily loggerheads but also greens and leatherbacks. The Park Service biologists go to great lengths to monitor and protect turtle eggs nesting in the sand after they are laid and buried by females, often in clutches of 100 eggs or more.  The hatchlings also require protection during their scramble across the beach and into the surf right after hatching, when they are at their most vulnerable. Predators include feral pigs, raccoons, armadillos and ghost crabs.

For many years SCA interns have been an important part of these efforts to conserve the nesting sites of these threatened and endangered turtles. In 2010 four SCA interns will go to Cumberland Island between May and October to help in this effort. There is also a 39-week Historic Preservation SCA intern currently serving there, helping to survey, document and preserve some of its major structures.

Most of the island sits under a romantic canopy of live oaks and Spanish moss. Scattered about are Carnegie mansions in various states of habitation or ruin. Near the northern end is the tiny African-American church in which John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette were married far from the eyes of the media. There are still a few private properties on the island but the Park Service has negotiated to acquire nearly all of them. It will then have to make difficult decisions about whether to spend scarce resources maintaining them (an extremely expensive process) or whether to let them crumble.

Kayakers are frequently accompanied by dolphins in the wide channel between the island and the mainland. Wild horses roam freely, foraging on the dunes for salt hay and browsing the few clearings. The large population of feral pigs is very destructive and a real problem, managed with a constant program of hunting and trapping.  Armadillos are recent arrivals and rustle in the undergrowth, unconcerned by passing humans. Birds abound on the island, an important stop on the Atlantic Flyway.

View Rick's slideshow.