Montgomery County is changing day by day, via planners, via developers, via population. We have been walking through a few related topics in previous articles noted below.
1 2 3 Now we take
it from a different but related perspective - conservation alongside regional urbanization.
A local consultant, Burditt Land and Place Consultanting in Conroe, specializes in
resource management, treescaping and urban planning. Integration is their central theme.
They have a design process that yields "definable and buildable" plans, molded from client
goals. My discussion with a couple of representatives of this company brings to reality much of the future of this area that I have been contemplating over the past few weeks. Pictured on the left, left to right are John Ross, CA,CF , Senior Resource Specialist and Charles Burditt, President. Inspired by these two gentlemen, I am sure you will appreciate what I am about to say. It is intended to begin to help open visionary eyes, where our children and grandchildren may live in the future. I constantly ask myself, "will they have the quality of life that we have, enough to enjoy natural resources and living as we do today?"
Resource management includes preservation and management of our trees and wildlife, in addition
to our water and soil. On staff of Burditt are architects, landscape architects, planners, park and
recreational professionals, engineers and conservation specialists. This company has completed planning projects for The Woodlands, Conroe, Magnolia, and Seabrook among others. Today, I met a long time
resident of the area, who explained the past to me, why we are where we are in urbanization
and resource management. We are in a boom - the "urban spread" era of our county!
"Just think, in the 1980s Montgomery County had the largest timber volume of any east
Texas county!" Today, the volume of wood is not only difficult to quantify, but just not in
the same ball park as then. This came about from a change in tax assessment law. One should know that the
influence of tax laws has affected timberlands throughout history. For example, under the
Ottoman Empire, tax evaders would hide in the forest from tax collectors. Today, if you travel
from Amman, Jordan to Israel, through the barren hills, you will see the outcome of
that forest. The government of that empire levied a payment for each tree cut down, so that
the tax evaders would not have safe haven from the government. Therefore, greed was
leveraged to destroy the forest. Government can negatively or positively affect the conservation of our natural resources.
In the case here of Montgomery County, along with other
counties, the assessment tax was changed to a productivity tax in the 1980's. As a direct
result, overnight it became too expensive to grow and harvest timber. Long term timber investments had to be sold for other purposes. George Mitchell was
one who already had a plan for his timberland. He also could not sustain timber operations
with the high cost of land taxes. This tax assessment strategy was a sudden change for the long
term investment process of timber production. Cattlemen got the tax advantage in the use of land. The difference
in land use taxes caused the large holding companies to sell off their assets - Friendswood, Mitchell, Foster, and Champion were large holders of timberland. Real estate companies
bought large amounts and sold them in smaller 100 acre or so parcels. Then the timberlands
began to be used for other purposes, eventually causing today's urban sprawl.
Timber remains an important resource to manage in this and adjoining counties. Even Harris
County has some significant forest remaining. There is in fact a 40+ acre timber farm in
northwest Harris County. In Montgomery and Grimes, there are still some significant pine
stands originally planted for timber production. There are locations near Montgomery, one
timber farm in the city limits of Conroe, some near Willis and some in the bottom lands of
southeast Montgomery county. Today, diversity of tree species is emphasized wherever tree resources are managed. Hardwoods are often included in any stands of trees whether it be for visual purposes or for wildlife management. Certain species like the Burr Oak or Cedar Elm provide deer and other wildlife with better resources than do pines. The old timberland production process is giving way to this new vision of tree diversity and carefully planned forests or parks to provide livable forests to inhabitants of the county, as urban sprawl takes its course.
I see my grandchildren living in the forests of Montgomery County, don't you? I see them on bicycles preparing for races on the bike ways, walking along the pedestrian ways to service providers and market. I also see shuttles carrying people past stands of trees and scenic ways. I see quiet neighborhoods but fairly densely populated, even in the far reaches of the county. I see water conservation using strategies for natural recharging of underground reservoirs and very accessible parks and green belts using the diversity of tall trees, some dense as we see in forests, others standing alone, as the planted hardwoods begin to mature. There will be remnants of the great east Texas forest, but it will not be the same. Even you and I do not see the true native forests here in The Woodlands. We are amidst the timber lands intended for logging, not exactly the native forest. Over time, the forest has been evolving, but we have few long leaf pines in it. Most of them are along the creek beds.
John Ross was quick to note that ranching has not been a factor on the forest productivity in the past few decades. Clearly the escalating arrival of people in our urban sprawl has affected the timber lands, but perhaps not as much as we might think. Now we face many opportunities to manage potential and in-place forest resources. What decline in tree population we have noticed can be mitigated somewhat with the planting of seedlings. The more we do, the better it will be for our childrens' families (and ourselves). Hopefully, the forest will be here, although in a different form in the future for the community. Charles Burditt noted some of their projects are now integrating pedestrian ways to achieve higher standards of living quality for livability. I will be following up with an article on a very interesting project his company has planned out. I can't wait to explore that for my readers.
To get there, one must take narrow forest dirt roads and even cross a small creek by automobile on board planks. It is remote but easily accessible in dry weather.
This is one of several very old gravestones, reminding us of the life difficulties. Martha Long lived a full life of that era. She is cataloged with the other interred Texans in this cemetery.2 
