21-07-2025
For Once, Some Good News About a Fragile Ecosystem
When Twin Pines, an Alabama-based mining company, bought a big chunk of land abutting the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in southeast Georgia and announced plans to build a titanium dioxide mine there, environmentalists, paddlers and anglers raised a great alarm. The proposed mine is on a geological formation known as Trail Ridge, which serves as a sort of earthen dam holding in place the waters of North America's largest ecologically intact blackwater swamp.
The Okefenokee is huge, covering hundreds of miles, but it is shallow — only two feet deep in many places — and it isn't fed by any waterways. Rain is the swamp's only source of replenishment.
News of a proposed mine at the doorstep of the Okefenokee 'landed like a punch in the gut,' said Bill Sapp, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, in an episode of 'Broken Ground,' the nonprofit's podcast. 'Even very small changes in water elevations can really have a dramatic effect.' A mine on Trail Ridge would be an existential risk to an ecosystem already under threat by climate change, pollution and Republicans' capricious interpretation of environmental protection laws.
Wetland ecosystems are always complex, but the scale of the Okefenokee makes it particularly so. Its many habitats include marsh, upland forest, prairie, cypress swamp and a meandering web of waterways. It hosts more than 600 plant species, in addition to dozens of mammal, reptile and amphibian species, as well as a spectacular 234 species of birds. It is a porous, breathing place, as close to pristine and primeval as any we are likely to see in the 21st century.
This ethereal place is also crucial to the human beings who live nearby. Drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, it supports hundreds of jobs and contributes approximately $65 million to the local economy.
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