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Contact: Jason Ginder, 409-951-6721 Big Thicket National Preserve joins parks, programs, and partners across the country to encourage everyone to find their park and share their stories online at FindYourPark.com. Launched earlier this month by the National Park Service and the National Park Foundation, Find Your Park is a public awareness and education campaign celebrating the milestone centennial anniversary of the National Park Service in 2016 and setting the stage for its second century of service. Find Your Park invites the public to see that a national park can be more than a place—it can be a feeling, a state of mind, or a sense of American pride. Beyond vast landscapes, the campaign highlights historical, urban, and cultural parks, as well as the National Park Service programs that protect, preserve and share nature, culture, and history in communities nationwide. A contest to find and celebrate the top 100 Find Your Park stories submitted by the public on FindYourPark.com is currently underway. Prizes will be awarded to the winners of this on-line contest.
“The 100th anniversary of the National Park Service gives us the opportunity to celebrate our heritage, refocus our relevance to today’s audiences and launch the national parks into the future.” stated Big Thicket National Preserve Superintendent Wayne Prokopetz. “Find Your Park opens the door for each person to find their own meaning and significance in the parks and public lands that are important to them.”
Big Thicket National Preserve is in southeast Texas just north of Beaumont and 75 miles northeast of Houston. The preserve consists of nine land units and six water corridors encompassing more than 112,000 acres scattered across a 3,500-square-mile area. The Big Thicket, often referred to as a “biological crossroads,” is a transition zone between four distinct vegetation types – the moist eastern hardwood forest, the southwestern desert, the southeastern swamp, and the central prairies. Species from all of these different vegetation types come together in the thicket, exhibiting a variety of vegetation and wildlife that has received national interest.
For general information about Big Thicket National Preserve, visit www.nps.gov/bith or call the preserve visitor center at 409-951-6700.
About the National Park Service: More than 20,000 National Park Service employees care for America's 407 national parks and work with communities across the nation to help preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities. Visit us at www.nps.gov, on Facebook www.facebook.com/nationalparkservice, Twitter www.twitter.com/natlparkservice, and YouTube www.youtube.com/nationalparkservice.
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Last updated: April 24, 2015