Around 5 p.m. on a Thursday in late summer, a small crowd gathers at Sunset Park on Landings Way South. Some arrive on foot. Most come by golf cart, because parking at the park is limited and everyone on the island already knows this. A volunteer sets a shallow tray on the grass near the water. Inside are hatchling diamondback terrapins, each smaller than a silver dollar, waiting to be carried the last few feet to the marsh they were born to live in.
This happens most Thursday evenings from early August through mid-September, with one final Sunday release in October. It is not a festival. There is no vendor tent, no sponsor banner. It is a volunteer group returning baby turtles to the water, and residents showing up because they want to watch it happen. The interesting part is not the ritual itself. It is what the ritual has earned inside a private golf community that otherwise names things after people, plants, and geography.
A Golf Course Renamed for Its Volunteers, Not Its Views
The Landings Golf & Athletic Club operates six courses across Skidaway Island. Five of them carry names tied to landscape or heritage. The third course, designed by Willard Byrd and opened in 1982 as the Plantation course, does not fit that pattern anymore. In the summer of 2020, The Landings Club renamed it Terrapin Point, in recognition of the volunteers who run Skidaway Audubon's Diamondback Terrapin Rescue Project.
Private golf clubs rebrand courses for a lot of reasons. A redesign. A new membership tier. A donor. A renaming built around an unpaid conservation program is a different kind of decision. It tells you that whoever runs the club decided a volunteer effort deserved the same permanence as a founder's name on a scorecard. Holes 8 through 10 of Terrapin Point run along the marsh, Adams Creek, and Ossabaw Sound, the same stretch of shoreline where the terrapins the course is named for have been coming ashore to nest for well over a decade.
It Started With Flowerpots on a Porch
The project's origin has nothing to do with institutional planning. A Landings resident who lived along the third hole started noticing female terrapins crossing the fairway to nest in the sand bunkers. Rather than let the nests get destroyed by predators or maintenance equipment, the resident began collecting the eggs and incubating them in sand-filled flowerpots on a home deck, contacting researchers at the University of Georgia Marine Extension Service for guidance along the way.
Skidaway Audubon formally adopted the program in 2010. With help from the club's grounds crew, nesting boxes went up on holes 3, 8, 9, 10, and 15 of what was then still called Plantation. The program has since become one of the larger diamondback terrapin rescue efforts on the East Coast, and the numbers behind it are the part most people driving past Sunset Park never see.
The Count That Keeps Climbing
Georgia lists the diamondback terrapin as a species of concern, a status tied to historic over-harvesting and ongoing pressure from crab traps, road crossings, and habitat loss. What makes the Skidaway program worth paying attention to is not that it protects a vulnerable species in the abstract. It is how fast the results have scaled since volunteers started tracking them publicly.
| Year | Hatchlings Released |
|---|---|
| 2022 | 3,787 |
| 2023 | 4,489 |
| 2024 | 5,781 |
| 2025 | 6,711 |
That is a climb of roughly 77 percent in three years, not because the terrapin population on Skidaway suddenly boomed, but because the rescue infrastructure got better at finding nests before something else did. Volunteers have credited critter-proofing the nesting boxes against moles and foxes as one recent improvement. Across the life of the program, Skidaway Audubon estimates it has protected around 3,400 nests and released close to 23,000 hatchlings, saving an estimated 88 percent of eggs that would otherwise have been lost. Before the program existed, that survival rate was close to zero.
Where the Nests Actually Are
The mechanics of the rescue are almost entirely visible if you know where to look. Terrapins nest in the same sand bunkers golfers play out of, concentrated on those five holes at Terrapin Point. Volunteers patrol on foot, bicycle, and golf cart, identifiable by a small blue flag bearing a turtle. Nesting season typically runs from spring into late summer, and for the past several years the caution signs Skidaway Audubon posts along Landings Way South near Sunset Park have become a fixture, warning drivers that females are crossing the road to reach nesting ground.
The Hatchling Happenings releases used to happen right on the course, at hole 3 of the old Plantation nine, back when the program was smaller and closer to its origin. These days the release point has moved to Sunset Park, a short golf cart ride from the Terrapin Point clubhouse, which means anyone on the island can watch without needing to be out on the course itself.
What's Left on the 2026 Calendar
For anyone who has missed the summer's releases so far, the 2026 season is not over. Skidaway Audubon has two Thursday evening releases and one final Sunday session remaining:
- Thursday, September 3 at 5 p.m., Sunset Park (707 Landings Way South)
- Thursday, September 17 at 5 p.m., Sunset Park
- Sunday, October 4 at 3 p.m., Sunset Park, the final release of the season
The events are free, with donations accepted, and questions can be directed to Skidaway Audubon through its volunteer contact. Golf carts are the practical way to arrive, since parking at Sunset Park is limited and most attendees already know to leave the car at home.
A Small Ritual, Written Into the Map
What the Terrapin Point renaming actually demonstrates is a working pattern for how Skidaway Island absorbs resident initiative into its permanent identity. A single homeowner's flowerpot experiment turned into a golf course name that will outlast anyone currently living here. That is a different kind of neighborhood signal than a new restaurant opening or a repaved trail. It says that on this island, a conservation habit practiced by a handful of neighbors can eventually get printed on a scorecard next to Willard Byrd's name.
For residents, that means the next few Thursday evenings at Sunset Park are worth the golf cart ride, whether or not you have ever set foot on the Terrapin Point fairways. For anyone who has ever wondered why one of the six courses on this island has a name that doesn't match the others, now you know where to stand at 5 p.m. to see exactly why.
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