Cumberland Island: A Wild Beauty at a Crossroads
Cumberland Island exists in the tension between preservation and progress, between the wild and the managed, between what has always been and what someone, somewhere, is trying to change.
I had wanted to visit Cumberland Island for years, drawn by stories of wild horses and windswept dunes. Finally, we set out, boarding the Cumberland Lady ferry from downtown St. Marys, GA. As we eased away from the dock, pelicans perched on wooden pilings, gulls skimmed the water for breakfast, and distant boats rested with the tide.
A squadron of American White Pelicans across a low marsh.
The ferry ride took about 40 minutes, carrying us toward a place where time seemed to stand still. As we neared the island, five wild horses emerged on the horizon.
The island revealed itself in layers: maritime forest giving way to dunes, dunes fading into marsh.
The tides shape this place daily, redrawing its edges, as if it is always becoming something new. Outer dunes bear the brunt of ocean storms, allowing the marsh to thrive in the sheltered space between the island and the mainland. The tides churn a rich stew of nutrients, feeding an ecosystem both delicate and resilient. Some of it is visible - herons stalking the shallows, oyster beds glinting in the light.
But much of it remains hidden beneath the surface, microscopic and constant, flowing through the dark water thick with cordgrass - a lifeblood that sustains it all.
Twice a day, the seawater floods the mudflats, then recedes, leaving them sunbaked and exposed.
Before visiting, I decided to dig deeper into the island's story, beyond the glossy brochures and informational plaques. What I found was concerning. In September 2024, the National Park Service (NPS) proposed a controversial land exchange: public lands on Cumberland Island would be traded for four privately owned tracts. On paper, the deal seemed promising - a way to protect more acres of salt marsh and maritime forest, ensuring uninterrupted trails and habitat. But the details were murky, and that uncertainty had conservationists on edge.
Cumberland has always been fragile, shaped by wind and tide, defined as much by what isn’t there as by what remains. When Congress designated it a National Seashore over fifty years ago, the intent was clear: preservation above all else. But now, with the prospect of private development creeping in under the guise of exchange, that intent feels vulnerable. Do these swaps truly serve the island, or do they make it easier to bargain away its future? It’s an old story - the push and pull between wilderness and the impulse to tame it, to make it just a little more accessible, a little more accommodating…
And then, of course, there are the horses. At least 150 feral horses roaming this National Seashore. Cumberland’s wild icons, their images softened in brochures, their reality much harsher and complicated. Thin coats stretch over ribs, hooves worn down from miles of foraging, and the ecosystem bearing the weight of their grazing. The horses are feral, not the descendants of Spanish explorers as legend suggests, but the remnants of animals released by island residents in 1949. Since then, they have become part of Cumberland’s mythology - both beloved and destructive.
Even the mere suggestion of removing the herd sparked controversy. At a recent public meeting, two-thirds of attendees voted to let the horses stay. It was a decision rooted not in ecology but in emotion, in the way we cling to certain images, no matter how misleading…
And so the island waits, caught between competing visions. How much of Cumberland will remain wild, and how much will be shaped by human hands? While the tides continue their quiet work, the answers remain slow in coming, buried in bureaucratic proposals, court cases, and public comment periods. Yet, the island will endure, as it always has…
