Big Thicket Legacy

Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1977. BB4 - A first edition (no additional printings) hardcover book SIGNED and dated by Lynn Loughmiller and Campbell Loughmiller with "With best wishes" written on the front free endpaper in very good condition in good dust jacket that is mylar protected. Dust jacket has old price label adhered on the front flap, wrinkling, chipping, crease, and small tears on the edges, corners, and sides, scattered scratches and rubbing, tanning, and light shelf wear. Book lightly cocked, some bumped corners, tanning, and light shelf wear. Foreword by Francis E. Abernethy. 10.25"x7.25", 222 pages. Satisfaction Guaranteed. The Big Thicket is the name given to a somewhat imprecise region of a heavily forested area in Southeast Texas in the United States. It is a highly biodiverse area for a temperate region, that has been described as "America's Ark" and the "Biological Crossroads of North America".The National Park Service established the Big Thicket National Preserve (BTNP) within the region in 1974 and it is recognized as a biosphere reserve by UNESCO. Although the diversity of animals in the area is high, with over 500 vertebrates, it is the complex mosaic of ecosystems and plant diversity that is particularly remarkable. Biologists have identified at least eight, and up to eleven, ecosystems in the Big Thicket area. More than 160 species of trees and shrubs, 800 herbs and vines, and 340 types of grasses are known to occur in the Big Thicket, and estimates as high as over 1000 flowering plant species and 200 trees and shrubs have been made, plus ferns, carnivorous plants, and more. The Big Thicket has historically been the most dense forest region in what is now Texas. Native Americans are known to have lived and hunted in the area nomadically, but did not establish permanent settlements there before the Alabama-Coushatta settled in the northeast about 1780. Spanish explorers and missionaries generally avoided the area and routed their roads around it. Logging in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries dramatically reduced the forest concentration. Efforts to save the Big Thicket from the devastation of oil and lumber industries started as early as the 1920s with the founding of the East Texas Big Thicket Association by Richard Elmer Jackson. In recent years, claims of the Big Thicket's position as a "biological crossroads" and its uniqueness have been called into question by some, arguing that the same habitat that occurs in Southeast Texas extends into Louisiana and eastward; however the importance of saving a representative sample of the Big Thicket was not questioned and regarded as something "for which we must be eternally grateful" by the same authors. While no exact boundaries exist, conservatively the area occupies all of Hardin County, most of Polk, and Tyler counties, and parts of Jasper, Liberty and San Jacinto counties, including areas between the Neches River on the east, the Trinity River on the west, Pine Island Bayou on the south, to the higher elevations and older Eocene geological formations to the north. Broader interpretations have included everything between the Sabine River on the east and the San Jacinto River on the west including much of Montgomery, Newton, Trinity, and Walker counties as well. Several attempts to define the boundaries of the Big Thicket have been made, including a biological survey in 1936 which included over 3,350,000 acres (13,600 km2) covering 14 counties. A later botanical based study in 1972 included a region of over 2,000,000 acres (8,100 km2).. Signed by Author. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Good. 4to - over 9¾" - 12" tall.