Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge

The Visitor Center and Wildlife Observation Center will both reopen tomorrow, with trails open at both locations. Please be aware that Pleasant Plains Road from immediately south of the Visitor Center down to the old headquarters building will remain closed until downed power lines can be removed by the utility company. This means all access to the Visitor Center will have to come from Lees Hill Road. Thank you for your patience and understanding

Pleasant Plains Road and the Visitor Center will be closed on Tuesday and possibly longer, until downed power lines along the road can be safely removed by utility crews. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Every year during the second week of June, we shell-e-brate native turtles and the people and partners working to conserve them. In partnership with the Friends of Great Swamp, the University of Georgia, and Bristol County Agricultural High School, refuge staff are taking proactive and outside-the-box steps to conserve wood turtles.

Partners in wood turtle conservation | U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service On a spring night in 2007, Kurt Buhlmann sat on an overturned five-gallon bucket with a headlamp and a pair of binoculars, looking for wood turtles emerging from a streambank and clambering toward an adjacent farm field to nest. When he spied one of the rare reptiles, he would intercept it, carry it...