Saving the Okefenokee Swamp

by Newt Gingrich & Jackie Gingrich Cushman

If you’ve ever had the opportunity to visit the Okefenokee Swamp in southeast Georgia, you know that it is a unique and irreplaceable treasure.

In the 1970s, Newt Gingrich was teaching environmental studies at what was then West Georgia College in Carrollton (now the University of West Georgia) and take his students on field trips to the Okefenokee Swamp. Just visualize it: A Volkswagen camping van, leaky tents, canoes that flipped over – and a professor with heavy sideburns, thick dark plastic glasses and a turtleneck. His family, including his daughter Jackie, would come along on some of those trips. For a grammar school child, it was heaven on earth.

The Okefenokee is North America’s largest blackwater wetland. It includes nearly 700 square miles of land, with 6,500-year-old peat islands that float on the water. Called the “Land of Trembling Earth,” by the Native Americans, there is nowhere else like the Okefenokee Swamp. The stars are more visible in the night sky due to low light pollution, and the area is inhabited by alligators, ducks, snakes, Sandhill cranes, and otters. It’s been designated a National Wildlife Refuge; it simply could not be replaced if it was harmed.

Read More in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

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