Conservation in Oklahoma
Oklahoma is part of the Central Flyway and provides important migration and winter habitat for waterfowl that are produced in the Prairie Pothole Region of Canada and the northern United States. In some years, Oklahoma has the potential to winter large numbers of mallards across the state. The Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) in Oklahoma emphasizes the protection and restoration of critical waterfowl habitat including bottomland hardwoods and moist-soil wetlands. DU has worked to conserve over 20,000 acres of waterfowl habitat throughout Oklahoma including several recent WRP projects along the Red River. Our goal is to secure the future of Oklahoma as a key migration area for migratory waterfowl in North America. Your support of DU will help us achieve that goal.
Oklahoma Habitat Projects
Wetlands Reserve Program - Oklahoma
There are a wide variety of wetland types found across the state of Oklahoma. The climate tends to get warmer and wetter as one moves across the state from northwest to southeast. As a result, the predominant wetland type changes from playas in the panhandle to riparian areas and depressions throughout the prairies to the bald cypress swamps of McCurtain County in the extreme southeastern corner of the state. In Oklahoma, as in many areas of the country, wetlands have been drained for agricultural uses. As a result, approximately 67 percent (nearly 2 million acres) of wetlands were removed from the landscape over the past 200 years. Both on a nationwide basis and in Oklahoma, bottomland hardwood forests have been especially hard hit. Estimated decreases in forested wetlands in LeFlore and McCurtain Counties suggest that approximately 84 percent of Bottomland Hardwoods have been destroyed since 1960...
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