Published 12:07 pm Tuesday, August 18, 2026 THOMASVILLE — The Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, one of Georgia’s Seven Natural Wonders, has a new title. On July 25, 2026, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, following a process that began in 1982 and culminated in a vote of the World Heritage Committee in July 2026 in Busan, South Korea. Thomasville resident Haile McCollum serves on the Board of Trustees for the Okefenokee Swamp Park and attended the committee meeting in South Korea as an official observer, where she saw an amazing display of cultures from across the globe, and also beamed with pride as the Okefenokee made history, becoming the first National Wildlife Refuge to be inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Georgia. Sitting at nearly half a million acres covered in upland forests, wet and dry prairies, and wetlands, the Okefenokee had first been identified as a potential World Heritage nomination site in 1982. Efforts were renewed in 2020 with the hiring of a new director and a partnership with the Okefenokee Swamp Park and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which finally helped move the nomination from a dream to a reality. The Okefenokee Swamp Park helped organize a dossier to submit to the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. “IUCN (the official advisory body for natural sites to UNESCO) came to the Okefenokee to double-check that everything in that dossier was like it said it was,” McCollum said.…
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