Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia joined Yellowstone National Park, the Great Barrier Reef, the Taj Mahal and other iconic places around the globe as the latest UNESCO World Heritage site. Members of a United Nations committee in South Korea voted to bestow the designation on the roughly 407,000-acre refuge, one of the world’s largest intact freshwater ecosystems.

“Today, the world is recognizing what we’ve always known — that this area is irreplaceable and worth protecting at every turn,” Stacy Funderburke, vice president of the central Southeast region at the Conservation Fund, said in a statement about the decision.

One of the South’s last truly wild places, the Okefenokee is home to an astonishing array of wildlife, including black bears, red-cockaded wood peckers, and thousands of alligators. Its flora includes black gum trees and carnivorous plants with names such as hooded pitcher, and golden trumpet. It also serves as the headwaters for two rivers, the Suwannee and the St. Marys, and its vast peat deposits store enormous amounts of carbon.

But the refuge, which was created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1937 and first identified as a possible World Heritage site in 1982, also has been the site of repeated battles over proposed mining at its doorstep. The most recent was a protracted fight over a proposed titanium mine that activists and scientists argued could disrupt the swamp’s pristine and fragile ecosystem.

The Conservation Fund purchased thousands of acres — and the underlying mineral rights — from the Alabama-based company that had fought for years to win approval to operate a titanium mine near the southeastern corner of the swamp.

Support for the UNESCO designation is not universal. Some residents in the area have expressed concerns about the potential impacts of an influx of tourists, while other critics have said they fear the United Nations might try to infringe on local property rights and impose other restrictions. (The federal government has said the refuge would continue to be wholly owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.)

Saturday’s vote makes the Okefenokee the only UNESCO World Heritage site in Georgia and the 27th in the United States. That list includes other natural landscapes such as the Grand Canyon and Everglades national parks, as well as revered cultural places such as the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall.

From Washington Post Article published July 25, 2026 by Brady Dennis.