Cumberland Island is the largest island wilderness in the country. It’s also one of the most threatened. In recent years, the south Georgia barrier island has been over-run by feral horses, hogs, and most recently, motorized vehicle tours.

Last month, in a landmark ruling for wilderness, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Park’s vehicle tours violated both the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

“This is one of the most important rulings in the 40-year history of the Wilderness Act,” stated George Nickas, Executive Director of Wilderness Watch, one of the conservation groups who brought the lawsuit. “The court has upheld the principle tenet that protecting Cumberland’s wilderness character comes first, and that the uses of the area must be managed in a way that doesn’t impact its wild character. This decision is a wake-up call for the Park Service, which has failed to live up to its Wilderness obligations at Cumberland Island for more than two decades.”

Cumberland Island became a National Seashore in 1972. Ten years later Congress designated 8,800 acres of the heart of the island’s north end as the Cumberland Island Wilderness. The island wilderness shelters over 300 species of birds and nesting sites for endangered sea turtles, including the threatened loggerhead sea turtle. Because of its ecological significance, Cumberland Island was named an International Biosphere Reserve in 1984.

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling protects the wilderness from vehicle tours, but it does not affect tours on the non-wilderness southern end of the island, where most of the popular visitor sites are found. Nor does it directly address the vehicle tours through the wilderness offered by Greyfield Inn, an exclusive hotel owned by wealthy Carnegie heirs on the southern end of the island.

“Right now [Greyfield is still] doing tours because they’re not technically in violation of a permit, because there’s not one on record,” explained Cumberland Island Superintendent Jerre Brumbelow to the Savannah Morning News. The Park Service offered them a one-year permit earlier this year, but Greyfield refused to sign it.

Now that the Park Service tours have been ended, Brumbelow expects a legal challenge to Greyfield’s tours in the coming months.

-George Nickas