News Release

Big Thicket Announces Texan By Nature Certification

Use this photo stand at the Pitcher Plant Trail to help us document how the pitcher plant bog changes over time.

NPS Photo / Scott Sharaga

News Release Date: December 4, 2020

Contact: Megan Urban, 409-951-6721

KOUNTZE, Texas – Big Thicket National Preserve is excited to announce that the park’s Chronolog Citizen Science project has been awarded Texan by Nature Certification.

The Chronolog Citizen Science project engages visitors in the documentation of natural changes at three sites around Big Thicket National Preserve. Each site highlights three different ecosystems found in the park and over time will provide park staff with photographic evidence of environmental change at each location. Using their cell phones, park visitors capture an image of the surrounding environment and e-mail that image to Chronolog. The site stitches together each image to create a time lapse showing environmental change over time.

Texan by Nature Project Certification provides Texas employers, organizations, and individuals with recognition of meaningful conservation efforts involving and benefiting people, prosperity, and natural resources. The Texan by Nature (formerly Taking Care of Texas) organization was founded in 2011 by former First Lady Laura Bush to align the broad interests of conservation groups with business, healthcare, schools, the scientific community, and faith-based organizations. Find more information about Texan by Nature at texanbynature.org.

“We’re honored that the Texan by Nature Project recognizes the scientific value for citizen science effort,” stated Big Thicket National Preserve Superintendent Wayne Prokopetz. “Certification by the Texan by Nature Project brings state-wide attention to all of the Texan-led conservation effort here in the preserve.”

Visitors to the park are encouraged to contribute to this important citizen science project. While exploring the pitcher plant bog on the northern edge of the Turkey Creek Unit, hikers will find the first of three Chronolog stations. Hikers along the Kirby Nature Trail will discover the second Chronolog station on a trail bridge at a cypress tupelo slough. The third Chronolog station in the preserve is located in the Big Sandy Creek Unit, just off Lily Road, near a recent longleaf pine reforestation site. More information on the Chronolog sites in the park can be found at www.chronolog.io/project/Big-Thicket-National-Preserve.

Big Thicket National Preserve is in southeast Texas, near the city of Beaumont and 75 miles northeast of Houston. The preserve consists of nine land units and six water corridors encompassing more than 113,000 acres. 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 global interest.

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