It’s not too often the Secretary of the Interior makes their way to Georgia. As the agency in charge of national parks, monuments, wildlife refuges and some other public lands, the Secretary is often focused out West. Public land is more plentiful, there are more national parks and relations with American Indian Tribes and Alaska Natives are another duty of the department. This week however, two of Georgia’s items on the Department of Interior’s (DOI) inventory were on the agenda.
Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold the post (and any cabinet secretary post for that matter, though Kaw Nation member Charles Curtis was Herbert Hoover’s vice president), visited Georgia over the weekend to highlight issues at two of Georgia’s natural gems.
Haaland first stopped at the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge with U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-GA, to highlight the environmental benefits and threats at the country’s largest blackwater swamp. At nearly half a million acres, the swamp is one of the largest intact freshwater ecosystems in the world, with peat beds, island prairies, creek channels and cypress forest making for an ideal home for flora and fauna. It is the largest National Wildlife Refuge east of the Mississippi and hosts some 300,000 visitors every year. All those tourists contribute more than $64 million and nearly 1,000 jobs to the local economy.
Haaland highlighted efforts to conserve lands and waters through locally led partnerships. The DOI has invested more than $1 million this year in hazardous fuels management projects on more than 9,000 acres. The new infrastructure law passed recently also helped to support some 8,500 acres of prescribed fire and 60 miles of forest restoration with an assist from the Georgia Forestry Commission.
Despite hopes from activists, Haaland did not specifically address the mining issue that is ongoing just outside the refuge boundaries. But her visit undoubtedly put the issue on more people’s radar and possibly brought the issue to the attention of the White House.
On Saturday, Haaland traveled up the road to Macon and visited the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park and attended the 30th Anniversary of the Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration. The park pays tribute to the Native Americans who lived in the area since the Ice Age.
“Georgia has a rich legacy of Native American life that stretches all the way back to the Stone Age,” said U.S. Rep. Sanford Bishop, D-GA. “The Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park is an archeological and cultural treasure. It was an honor to join Secretary Haaland and meet the leaders, youth, and artists of the Muscogee Creek Nation who have come together in their ancestral homelands to share their enduring and vibrant culture.”
Bishop sponsored a bill in 2019 which elevated the site from National Monument to National Historical Park and added more than 2,000 acres to the site, connecting noncontiguous areas and improving the connection to the city of Macon. Haaland’s visit helped to highlight what is now one of Georgia’s largest DOI sites outside of the Okefenokee and the continued legacy of the Muscogee tribe that lived there.
