At 84, a Georgia Ecologist Still Lives Alone on a Remote Island and Battles Development

Carol Ruckdeschel, an 84-year-old ecologist and wildlife researcher known as the “Jane Goodall of sea turtles,” has spent 53 years living alone on Cumberland Island, Georgia. She moved there in 1973 and now says new National Park Service plans could destroy one of the Atlantic’s last wild places, according to a BBC report published Friday.

Ruckdeschel first came to the island in 1960 as a 28-year-old biology researcher from the University of Georgia. She later left Atlanta permanently, and in 1978 used her last savings to buy an abandoned wooden cabin in the island’s remote north, originally built by freed slaves in the 19th century. She spent two years repairing it with driftwood and materials she found on the island. Today she still lives there without basic infrastructure, collecting rainwater, pumping water from a well, cooking and heating with firewood she gathers herself, and surviving largely on produce, fish and wild animals.

Alongside that life of self-sufficiency, Ruckdeschel built a major scientific record. On weekly surveys along the island’s 17-mile shoreline, she performed more than 4,000 turtle necropsies and documented causes of death and stomach contents. Her findings showed that many sea turtles die after being trapped in shrimp trawl nets, helping drive federal legal changes and redesigned fishing nets that let turtles escape. She also assembled one of the world’s largest collections of turtle skulls and shells, later transferring it to the National Park Service for the Georgia Museum of Natural History.

Cumberland Island covers more than 36,000 acres and is managed as a protected national seashore. It has no paved roads, stores, restaurants, trash bins or basic utilities, and daily visitation is capped at 300 people, with reservations required months in advance. Ruckdeschel lives 25 kilometers from the ferry terminal and has spent decades opposing vehicle tours, land swaps, and even a proposed commercial spaceport.

Her current fight is against a deal that would allow new homes to be built on the island for the first time in decades, and against an NPS proposal to raise the daily visitor limit to 750, allow e-bikes, and add concessions and tourist facilities. She says the changes would threaten the island’s sounds, plants and wildlife, including rare songbirds and wild horses. “I learn something new every day, and that is what I love,” she said.