BONNER RUSSELL COHEN: Trump Should Keep Out Of Okefenokee Swamp

There is an uninvited guest poised to take up permanent residence in southeast Georgia’s fabled Okefenokee Swamp, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum should send the intruder packing.

One month before leaving office, the Biden administration’s Interior Department – without consulting local officials or residents – nominated the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge to be designated as a World Heritage Site under the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Seven months later, in July 2025, the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from UNESCO, a step that goes into effect on Dec. 31, 2026.

“Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the national interest of the United States,” the State Department said in announcing the withdrawal. “UNESCO works to advance divisive social and cultural causes and maintains an outsized focus on the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, a globalist ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy.”

If exiting UNESCO is such a good idea, and it is, precisely for the reasons the State Department stated, then why hasn’t the Okefenokee’s nomination to become a World Heritage Site been yanked by the Trump Interior Department?

Covering over 407,000 acres on the Georgia-Florida border, the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge is North America’s largest intact freshwater ecosystem. The Okefenokee features thousands of alligators, along with black bears, deer, waterfowl, cypress forests, and peat (decayed vegetation)-based floating islands known as “trembling earth.”

The Biden administration sought to assure the public that World Heritage Site status would not impinge on U.S. sovereignty over the Okefenokee. “UNESCO only monitors the current conditions and potential threats to the designated properties,” it said in a