Crowded Cumberland? National Park Service adopts new visitation policy

Cumberland Island is on many a nature lover’s bucket list. Soon, would-be visitors will have more flexibility in planning their trips to the remote Georgia barrier island.

The National Park Service on Friday adopted a new visitation policy for the island, which the federal agency manages as a national seashore. Known as the Visitor Use Management Plan, it is meant to “reduce the barriers to visiting” by offering more ferry seats — no bridge connects Cumberland to the mainland — more campsites and more concessions on the primitive paradise.

The increased access means the island could see more than twice as many daily visitors as it has since public ferry service began there five decades ago. A plan instituted in 1984 capped ferry passengers at 300 per day, and the update adopted Friday boosts that to 700, including 100 at a potential new ferry dock location.

Cumberland currently receives approximately 60,000 annual visitors, or around 165 a day.

“The Visitor Use Management Plan provides a flexible and forward-looking framework that will help us protect and manage what makes Cumberland Island so extraordinary,” said Cumberland Island National Seashore Superintendent Melissa Trenchik in a press release.

Cumberland Island is Georgia’s largest and southernmost barrier island. Once a retreat for Gilded Age tycoons, such as the Carnegie family, Cumberland became a national seashore in 1972 following a commercial development bid by Charles Fraser, the developer behind resorts on Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, and Amelia Island, Florida.

The federal government now owns more than 90% of Cumberland’s 36,000 acres.

A newly adopted policy increases the number of daily public ferry visitors to Cumberland Island. (Stephen B. Morton for the AJC 2022)

Critics of the new visitation plan, a project dating to 2014, say expanding access runs contrary to the reasoning cited by Congress in establishing the island as a national seashore in 1972. The legislation read that Cumberland is to be “permanently preserved in its primitive state.”

“There appears to be no evidence that demand for visitation is on a scale that the (plan) proposes to serve,” said David Kyler, director of the Georgia-based environmental group Center for a Sustainable Coast. The plan “is likely to promote demand beyond levels consistent with management objectives, and also likely to generate excessively disruptive activities … that conflict with the congressionally established public purpose of” the national seashore.

The National Park Service did not share a timeline for the expanded ferry service, saying only that “the plan allows for measured implementation.” The same goes for other approved changes, such as adding 22 campsites across the island’s campgrounds and the opening of a canoe-kayak rental and a combination camp store-gift shop.

The plan also mentions an on-island bicycle rental, although that concession has not operated since 2019. Bikes are prohibited in Cumberland’s designated wilderness areas and along more than 12 of the island’s 17 miles of beach.

“This is not something that happens overnight — it’s a thoughtful, long-term approach that ensures we care for the island while still providing meaningful, memorable experiences for visitors.” Trenchik said.

A wild horse grazes in the large secondary sand dunes on the southern end of Cumberland Island. (Curtis Compton/AJC 2007)

Revising the Visitor Use Management Plan has been a drawn-out and controversial process. Earlier drafts, published in 2019 and 2022, were shelved after drawing heavy public criticism.