After decades of fire suppression, the National Park Service may be lifting its ban on fire. They have released a draft Fire Management Plan which proposes prescribed burns to reduce fuel loads on the island. Fire is essential to the health of the island. While prescribed burns are a step in the right direction, we encourage the park to adopt […]
The Roller Coaster Trail is probably my favorite trail on Cumberland Island. I had traveled seven hours by car, then another hour by ferry, then trekked ten miles just to reach it. I was hoping to find a quiet footpath in the wilderness, an undisturbed hike immersed in the wild heart of Cumberland Island. Instead, I found four wheelers. The […]
In one month, the National Park Service received over 2,000 comments on its retained rights property disposition plan. Many were in support of opening The Grange to the public. Others were critical of the Park’s plan to maintain three additional island buildings for government housing. The National Park Service’s Retained Rights Property Disposition proposes making the Carnegie structure at Dungeness, […]
The Park Service deserves our support for opening The Grange to the public, but the rest of the retained estate management plan needs a closer look. While housing for essential Park Service personnel at Little Greyfield is logical and mentioned in the General Management Plan, many structures outside that area have come to be used as housing for discretionary personnel […]
The National Park Service announced a courageous decision on the most important issue facing Cumberland Island: retirement of retained rights. This week, the Park chose not to allow a wealthy island family to continue living on the island after their retained rights had already expired. Instead, The Grange will be opened to the public and integrated into the south end […]
V.J. Henry, co-founder and chairman of Wild Cumberland, passed away last year. To honor V.J.’s conservation legacy, his daughter Carolyn Rader recently donated $500 to the chapter. Both V.J. and Carolyn have been long-time champions of Cumberland Island’s wilderness. V.J. earned his doctorate in Oceanography from Texas A & M. He joined the faculty at the University of Georgia and […]
If you sell your home, do you expect to be able to keep living in it? That’s what one island family is trying to do. If there is one single island issue that you should absolutely care about and act upon, it’s the dangerous, precedent-setting plan to extend the retained rights of The Grange, a historic house on the south […]
Superintendent Boyles also responded to letters from Wild Cumberland supporters regarding feral animals: “The National Park Service is well aware of the potential impacts of excessive numbers of feral hogs. To combat this, we have had a program in place since 2001 utilizing NPS wildlife biologists and technicians to conduct year-round hog management on Cumberland. In addition to this, the […]
In the past six months, Superintendent Fred Boyles has taken some encouraging steps toward restoring fire to Cumberland Island. First, the park funded and supported a historical fire regime study that will help determine the role of fire on the Island. Second, the park has funded and intends to hire a fire management officer with a background in fire use […]
When the National Park Service purchased lands from island owners to create Cumberland Island National Seashore in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they also granted retained rights to those people to continue living on the island for a finite period. Each of the retained rights granted by the National Park Service varied according to the contract signed by each […]