The Okefenokee is 407,000 acres of blackwater, peat and cypress on the Georgia-Florida line, and as of Saturday it is a World Heritage Site [1].
The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, meeting in South Korea, inscribed the refuge on July 25 - the first such designation anywhere in Georgia, and the 27th in the United States [1].
About 800,000 people visit the swamp each year. Those involved in the campaign expect recognition to roughly double that by 2035 and to support up to 700 jobs in the counties around it [1].
World Heritage status is not a legal shield in American law; the refuge's protections come from its status as a National Wildlife Refuge. What inscription adds is a different kind of weight - an international register of places judged to matter to everyone, and a swamp that spent most of its history being described as wasteland is now on it [1].
