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Josh Howard has been coming to Georgia's for 50 years, starting with his grandfather taking him there, then taking his own children. He knows just about every inch of the place.
"We spent many-a-nights out in the swamp," Howard said. "Some of my best memories have been out here."
At nearly 700 unspoiled square miles, Okefenokee Swamp is bigger than entire cities like Nashville or Phoenix. It's home to more than 1,000 species of plants and wildlife — cottonmouth snakes, turtles and red-cockaded woodpeckers, which were once an endangered species.
"You hear the sandhill cranes bugling out on the marshes, and that's what wakes you up," Howard said.
And all the animals clear out when one of the 15,000 gators glides through.
But in 2019, naturalists said the swamp was under threat after a mineral company that owned land three miles away sought permits to mine zirconium and titanium.
So Howard, a Republican in deep-red rural Georgia, became an unlikely environmentalist, testifying at the state Legislature.
"What we're trying to mine for, it'll make a few people a little richer, but it could potentially ruin something that is, I believe, is good for humanity," Howard told Autos News. "You can call me a tree hugger if you want to. There's some things you just got to stand up for, and I don't see this as a political issue."
Rhett Jackson, a hydrologist at the University of Georgia, examined the mining company's proposal to pump more than a million gallons of water per day from the ground near the swamp.
"It basically took the severe drought conditions from 3% of the time to 9.5% of the time. There have been four major fires that came out of the swamp since the 1950s," Jackson said.
Two of those fires were in 2011 and 2017, Jackson said.
Still, the mining company pressed ahead, saying the mine would not hurt the swamp. Then, just when it appeared the mine would be approved, a nonprofit called The Conservation Fund paid $60 million to buy the mining company's land, stopping the project in June.
Although Howard no longer worries about the swamp every day, he says the fight isn't over. There is other private, mineral-rich land nearby that could still be mined.
"Everywhere you look, there's just life," Howard said.
