Texas’ Big Thicket
The Big Thicket is a heavily forested region in East Texas that has been nicknamed the biological crossroads of America because of its ecosystem and biological diversity. Four major North American ecosystem types can be found there: southeastern swamps, eastern forests, central plains and southwest deserts. There are several endangered species found in the area.
The exact location of the Big Thicket is a matter of disagreement, depending on what criteria is used for its designation. Criteria that have been used are soils, vegetation and tradition. The map below depicts the three competing definitions for the thicket.
 
Source: Gunter, Pete, The Big Thicket: A Challenge for Conservation, Jenkins Publishing Company, Austin, 1971, pp. 46-47. |
After the designation of the National Park Service’s Big Thicket National Preserve, many people use the term Big Thicket to refer only to the Preserve.Today the Big Thicket Region is a patchwork of commercial timberland, oil and gas fields, farms, small towns, encroaching suburbs, and parks and preserves but long term residents still remember when the region was open access.
“When I was young, you could, there weren’t any fences. You could go anywhere you wanted to. You could go hunting anywhere you wanted to. You didn’t have to ask anybody. You couldn’t hunt in somebody’s back yard, but any, I mean this was a wilderness when I was a boy and you could go hunting anywhere and didn’t have to ask anybody anything.”
Conservation organizations are working with the National Park Service to maintain the buffer zones around Preserve units which timber lands provide, and ensure connectivity between units. They are working with the National Park Service to acquire land and conservation easements toward this end.
In 1974, Congress established the Big Thicket National Preserve to be managed by the National Park Service. The original size of the Preserve was 84,000 acres. It is currently almost 100,000 acres. It was designated as a UNESCO Man and Biosphere Reserve in 1981 and as a Globally Important Bird Area by the American Bird Conservancy. It is home to numerous endangered and threatened species and a number of orchids and carnivorous plants. The black bear is returning to the region and a research team has been searching for signs of the Ivory Billed Woodpecker.
The National Park Service is working with several partners to identify all life forms in the Preserve. Known as the Thicket of Diversity (TOD), volunteer scientists, students and nature enthusiasts work in taxonomic working groups to collect and catalog specimens. Not only have they discovered species new to the Preserve, several species new to science have been found. Click here to visit the TOD website http://www.thicketofdiversity.org/
Unlike most NPS lands, BTNP is spread across 15 fragmented land and water units in six counties. These units consist of lands with unique features and high biodiversity with ripa
rian zones connecting them. Although one contiguous land mass was the preferred configuration for the Preserve, the National Park Service and Preserve supporters agreed to the fragmented design because the preserve was surrounded on all sides by timber production lands, thus providing a green zone around the preserve and inhibiting development.
The dispersed nature of the units means that towns, land companies and private land dot its borders. Additionally, there are a few inholdings still in the preserve, one of which is the historic Teel cemetery, still used today. 
In 2004 the preserve was listed by the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) as one of the 10 most endangered parks in the nation www.npca.org .
The preserve faces serious challenges because it is so fragmented. Millions of acres of private timber land that had served as a buffer zone around the individual preserve units has been sold in the past several years. Some of it remains as timber land.
Timber Investment Management Corporations have bought thousands of acres. Because they are still in timber, they buffer the Preserve. Other lands are being sold to myriad private and corporate interests and the region is on the cusp of a development boom. Forest lands are being subdivided and offered as lots ranging from twenty acres to several hundred acres.
http://www.btatx.org/
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/texas/
http://www.conservationfund.org/act_now/texas_pineywoods
Maryland's Eastern Shore