OKLAHOMA CITY – Budgets totaling $424,000 for personnel and operating expenses for five conservation districts in southwestern Oklahoma were approved recently by the state Conservation Commission. The funding will finance salaries and operating expenses during Fiscal Year 2020, which began July 1, 2019, and concludes on June 30, 2020.
The Oklahoma Legislature in 1971 recognized “the ever-increasing demands on the renewable natural resources” of this state – identified in state statute as land, soil, water, vegetation, trees, “natural beauty, scenery and open space” – and acknowledged “the need to preserve, protect and develop” those resources at a rate and at levels of quality “as will meet the needs” of residents of this state.
Therefore, the Legislature declared that it is the policy of this state to “provide for the conservation of the renewable natural resources” of the Sooner State; to provide for the “control and prevention of soil erosion”; to prevent “floodwater and sediment damages”; and to advance “the conservation, development, utilization and disposal of water...”
Those practices are intended to “preserve and develop natural resources, control floods, conserve and develop water resources and water quality, prevent impairment of dams and reservoirs, preserve wildlife, preserve natural beauty, promote recreational development, protect the tax base, protect public lands, and protect and promote the health, safety and general welfare” of Oklahomans.
The same state statute authorized conservation districts to “serve as the primary local unit of government responsible for the conservation of the renewable natural resources” of Oklahoma, and to allow those districts to “administer, in close cooperation” with landowners, local units of government, and with state and federal agencies, “projects, programs and activities suitable for” promoting the policy of the Conservation District Act.