Special to The Beacon FOLKSTON — After six years, a controversial bid to mine next door to Georgia’s famed Okefenokee Swamp is no more.
The Conservation Fund, a nonprofit specializing in acquiring at-risk lands, announced Friday, June 20, it has purchased property near the Okefenokee where an Alabama-based company had planned to mine. The move puts an immediate halt to a project that scientists and environmentalists had feared could irreparably damage North America’s largest blackwater swamp.
Twin Pines declined to comment on the sale of its land.
Drew Jones, a Charlton County commissioner who works for a large timber company, supported the project and decried the public backlash. He said the sale wastes an “opportunity for economic development in our poor, rural community” and scraps a chance for critical mineral sourcing.
“I strongly believe in private property rights and in the need for future projects to be assessed with greater objectivity, rather than driven by emotion or public pressure,” Jones said in a written statement.
The commissioner also argued private forestland owners are being asked to bear the brunt of preserving their property rather than developing it.
“These lands provide tremendous public value, while also becoming increasingly unsustainable for private landowners to maintain them,” Jones said. “If the public values the many benefits it receives from privately owned forestland, then it must also recognize that these benefits come at a cost — one that has largely been borne, without compensation, by private landowners.
It’s a stunning end to a yearslong fight over the mine that has been waged in courtrooms, the halls of the Georgia General Assembly and in rural counties surrounding the vast wilderness.
For environmental advocates who had pushed federal and state officials to reject the project, the agreement is likely to be seen as a monumental victory, even though other land along the swamp’s edge remains open to mining exploration.
The land is being purchased from Twin Pines Minerals — the company behind the proposed mine — for just under $60 million, according to The Conservation Fund.
The acquisition was brokered with the financial support of some of the country’s leading private philanthropies, including the James M. Cox Foundation and the Holdfast Collective, a nonprofit focused on environmental protection. Holdfast is funded by the outdoor apparel giant Patagonia. Jim Kennedy, the chairman of the James M. Cox Foundation, is chairman emeritus of Cox Enterprises, the parent company of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In a statement, Kennedy called the Okefenokee “a Georgia and national treasure that must be protected.”
“It is extremely important that we work together to preserve natural habitats throughout our state and country,” he added.
The Conservation Fund is purchasing the nearly 600-acre tract Twin Pines had planned to mine initially, along with all of the company’s other land holdings in the area comprising roughly 8,000 acres. In addition to the land, the group is also acquiring the underlying mineral rights.
Twin Pines had promised its mine would protect the swamp and bring hundreds of good-paying jobs to rural Charlton County, home to the mine site and much of the Okefenokee. The median household income in Charlton County is about $26,000 less than it is statewide, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Stacy Funderburke, The Conservation Fund’s regional vice president covering Georgia and Alabama, said for now, the property will be managed for conservation. But ultimately, he said the organization’s goal is to permanently protect the land to allow public access, ideally by adding it to the federal Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.
Funderburke called the acquisition the most important deal he’s ever worked on.
“Even though we’ve worked on much larger acreage deals around the country and even larger dollar transactions, this one is the biggest so far,” Funderburke said.
He acknowledged there’s a “huge need” for more land to be protected and said his organization will continue discussions to benefit the swamp and protect property rights.
Environmental groups who fought the mining proposal and helped rally funders praised the coalition for acquiring the land — and Twin Pines for choosing to sell the properties into conservation.
“Twin Pines’ decision to sell their land to a conservation buyer instead of to a mining company is a respectable response to the hundreds of thousands of voices who have spoken out against the mining proposal,” said Megan Desrosiers, president and CEO of the Brunswick-based coastal protection nonprofit One Hundred Miles.
Megan Huynh, a senior attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, praised Georgians who she said “sent a clear message to Twin Pines Minerals that mining next to the Okefenokee is an unacceptable risk.”
“This wouldn’t have been possible without a powerful coalition, and regular Georgians who were willing to stand up and defend a place as beloved as the Okefenokee,” Huynh said.
