Do creatures from the Black Lagoon and swamp things pique your curiosity? Have you ever wondered what lurks in the murky depths? If so, the Phinizy Swamp Nature Park in Augusta, Georgia, is for you. Here’s what you should know about the gorgeous and mysterious environments you can explore there.
Guests are invited to visit Phinizy Swamp Nature Park year-round, admission-free. And it’s worth the trip. After arriving at the park’s unassuming gravel parking lot, visitors can follow a short and serene tree-lined walking path down to the Floodplain Boardwalk. Here, atmospheric swamp landscapes will immediately draw you in. The boardwalk stretches out across the floodplain of Butler Creek, where egrets, beavers, and other critters hide in the trees and brush.
Since 1996, the Phinizy Center has worked to protect these wild landscapes and build healthy, sustainable watersheds. Before the nonprofit’s establishment, the area was an illegal dumping site, where trash and other pollutants compromised downstream water quality. It took teams of students, researchers, and other volunteers to clean up the land and rehabilitate it back to natural wonder status. Today, educators, caretakers, and other park team members use the thriving Phinizy Swamp Nature Park to educate the community and advocate for conservation.
While a stroll along the park’s beautiful Beaver Dam Trail can teach you a lot about the region, science-minded and outdoors-loving guests can deepen their understanding of the area through Phinizy’s Eco Explorers program. Just be prepared to wade through swamp water and face some bugs. The program takes visitors on a guided park tour, from the boardwalk down to Sunrise Pond.
At the pond, park volunteers and researchers like Rachael Gonzalez and Jacob Lott will guide explorers through the process of catching aquatic macroinvertebrates with a dip net. From there, you’ll take your catches up to a nearby covered pavilion and look at them under microscopes. As you try to identify which critters you’ve caught, your guides will provide insight into how these minuscule insects help researchers track water quality and environmental health.
Guests may very well come away from the program with a new love for Georgia’s wetlands. And if they do, there are some pretty cool ways to get involved at Phinizy. Volunteers, Phinizy members, and citizen scientists can all help make a difference.
Interested in learning more about the research projects going on at Phinizy? You can explore that, too! The park’s research page provides excellent resources and information on initiatives like the effort to monitor and restore the Shoals spider lily.
