Houston Regional Group - News

Big Thicket Additions Need Your Support!!!

Brandt Mannchen

Protection of Big Thicket National Preserve (BTNP) has entered a crucial land acquisition phase which may determine if this National Park System Unit survives the 21st Century. With your show of support to key public officials a unique opportunity to add protective buffers and corridors to BTNP will not disappear forever!

In 1993 the Big Thicket Addition Act passed the U.S. Congress after 7 years of dogged effort by the Sierra Club, Big Thicket Association, Texas Committee on Natural Resources, and other conservationists. To this day the almost 11,000 acres of Addition Act lands along beautiful Big Sandy and Village Creeks and the Lower Canyonlands of the Neches River have not been acquired. Currently, U.S. Senator Kay Bailey-Hutchison and U.S. Representative Jim Turner are pushing the U.S. Congress for at least $5 million in appropriations so acquisition of these lands can begin.

At the same time Louisiana-Pacific and International Paper are selling over 1 million acres of forest land in East Texas. Much of this acreage is near or surrounds BTNP. Up to now these timber company lands have buffered and protected BTNP from the impacts of commercial, residential, and industrial development. Now that will not be the case!

Unless we act quickly to acquire and add some of these lands the BTNP will be surrounded by a sea of development which will isolate, fragment, and diminish wildlife habitat and biological diversity. Expanded roads, billboards, mobile homes, light pollution, strip malls, convenience stores, residential developments, gas stations, frontage roads, massive concrete overpasses, and ticky-tacky developments will devastate the beauty, solitude, and quiet of BTNP.

The lands that will be added to BTNP have important biological, ecological, and hydrological features. Some of these lands include Rush Creek, Woodpecker Hill, McMickin Lake, and the Upper Canyonlands. Cut over lands will also be acquired to serve as protective buffers for BTNP. Over time cut over lands will grow into beautiful, diverse, Big Thicket forests with Longleaf and other pines and many kinds of hardwoods. The Beech Creek Unit will triple in size and will be connected to the Canyonlands Unit and the Neches River, the Jack Gore Baygall/Neches Bottom Unit will almost double in size, and there will be major expansions of the Turkey Creek and Lance Rosier Units and existing stream corridors.

Here’s what you need to do. Contact U.S Senator Kay Bailey-Hutchison (U.S. Senate, Wash., D.C. 20510, (o)202-224-5922, fax 202-224-0776) and U.S. Congressman Jim Turner (U.S House of Representatives, Wash., D.C. 20515, (o)202-225-2401, fax 202-225-5955). Thank them and tell them you support their efforts to obtain full funding for the 11,000 acres of Addition Act lands.

Tell them that now is a once in a lifetime opportunity to acquire important forest lands from willing timber company sellers to add to, buffer, connect, and expand the BTNP. Tell them you support acquisition of these lands and ask them to push the U.S. Congress to buy these lands. Get your friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers, and others to help!

For more information call Maxine Johnston at (h)936-262-8522 or Brandt Mannchen at (h)713-664-5962 or (w)713-640-4313. Contact Senator Hutchison and Congressman Turner today! Your efforts will make a difference!! Thanks for your help!!!

September 2002

Last updated:  10/02/2005.   Content © 1999-2001 by the Sierra Club.