Page 17 - September/October Outdoor Oklahoma Magazine

By Kristen Gillman, Lands and Minerals Coordinator
In 2018, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife
Conservation submitted its first project proposals for
Natural Resources Damage Assessment (NRDA) fund-
ing. NRDA is the legal process that federal, state and In Oklahoma, eight sites have resulted in
tribal governments cooperatively use to evaluate the contamination of terrestrial and stream
impacts of oil spills, and hazardous waste sites. This environments because of sewage releases,
process also studies the impacts to the environment,
mining waste, refinery waste, hazardous
assessing and restoring the public’s lost use of injured
substances (solvents, insecticides,
natural resources.
In Oklahoma, eight sites have resulted in contami- pesticides, sludge and industrial waste).
nation of terrestrial and stream environments because
of sewage releases, mining waste, refinery waste,
hazardous substances (solvents, insecticides, pesti-
cides, sludge and industrial waste).
Fines levied due to the dam-
age to the environment were put WILDLIFEDEPARTMENT.COM
into a fund administered by the
Oklahoma Secretary of Energy and
Environment (SOEE).
The State of Oklahoma, acting
through the SOEE, in cooperation
with state agencies, developed
the Statewide Comprehensive
Restoration Plan that provides an out-
line and process to select restoration
alternatives and increase restoration
of injured or lost natural resources
and services. The Plan has provided
This area at Cooper WMA was overgrown with brush and invasive vegetation, and was
the Wildlife Department with a unique selected for habitat improvement efforts using NRDA funds.
opportunity to complete large-scale
habitat improvement projects, buy
equipment, acquire land and improve WILDLIFEDEPARTMENT.COM
the state’s fisheries.
NRDA’s goal is to plan and imple-
ment actions to restore, replace, or
rehabilitate natural resources that
were injured or lost due to the release
of a hazardous substance, or to
acquire the equivalent of the resourc-
es or the services they provide.
ODWC’s Wildlife Division took this
opportunity to use funding from the
federal Wildlife Restoration Program
to yield millions of extra dollars for fish
After daylighting the area at Cooper WMA, the habitat is now very useful for many species
and wildlife restoration. of wildlife.

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