Nature writer Janisse Ray likes Cumberland Island:I like the kingfishers, sea turtles, dolphins, pelicans. I like the sea oats and live oaks. The royal tern.
But paving is coming even to that remote wildlife sanctuary:
Now all that wildness is in jeopardy. The National Park Service (NPS) wants to run motorized tours through it. It wants to rewrite history: take 9,800 acres of wilderness and hamstring it. It wants roads, Moses in an 18-passenger van.
The Wildlife Act says you can't do that, and:
An 11th Circuit Court judge agreed. No motor traffic. But the NPS and Cumberland landowners have a friend in Rep. Jack Kingston, and he performed a little magic trick for them. He made a bill that would redraw the wilderness. After the bill failed more than once on its own, he attached it as a rider – one of an infestation of anti-environment amendments -- to the Omnibus Spending Bill of 2004. The bill passed, so the rider rode through. Abracadabra!
Jack Kingston, the developers' magician! I think he's talking roads bigger than the one in the picture, too.
Bill Gillespie points out that if they wanted easy access to the chapel JFK Jr. got married in, they could have moved it to the southern camping end.
Preserve nature: oust Jack and vote Bill Gillespie for GA-01.
1 comment:
Bill, how can the place be classified as a wilderness if you allow people to visit, live and move about on the island.
There are two things to do with the island.
1. remove all the people and let it return to its original natural state.
2. Open it up for any and every one who wants to come, stay, and enjoy the beach and the forests. Put roads all over the island. Run shuttle vessels throughout the day. Charge the people a huge fee to visit and use the facilities. Make the island self supporting and not be a drag on the taxpayers.
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