The Tar Creek Superfund Site is a portion of the abandoned lead and zinc mining area known as the Tri-State Mining District (OK, KS and MO) and includes over 100 square kilometers of disturbed land surface and contaminated water resources in extreme northeastern Oklahoma. Underground mining from the 1890s through the 1960s degraded over 1000 surface hectares, and left nearly 500 km of tunnels, 165 million tons of processed mine waste materials ( chat), 300 hectares of tailings impoundments and over 2600 open shafts and boreholes. Approximately 94 million cubic meters of contaminated water currently exist in underground voids. In 1979, metal-rich waters began to discharge into surface waters from natural springs, bore holes and mine shafts. Six communities are located within the boundaries of the Superfund site.

State fish and wildlife agencies in the United States are confronted with the realities of a rapidly changing society. With declines in historical sources of revenue and the growth of diverse voices with values that differ from those emphasized by traditional policies and user groups, agencies are faced with diminishing relevancy and are encountering institutional challenges that inhibit their ability to serve the broader public. Here, in collaboration with a group of fish and wildlife agency leaders from 11 states, conservation professionals, and academics, we employ qualitative methods and concepts from systems theory to develop an integrative model of a state wildlife agency. We use this model to identify leverage points to induce transformational change toward an ideal future state: one driven by a system of shared values toward wildlife and a mission to improve quality of life for all people. Our findings point to the importance of developing interventions that will lead to changes in agency culture, systems of governance, and policy and action, and enhance the accessibility of natural resources and opportunities for diverse publics to engage with and benefit from fish and wildlife. We offer recommendations for state wildlife agencies to engage in adaptive organizational change and for university programs to support agency needs.

Exploration and production (E&P) in increasingly remote areas present challenges to addressing both worker health and other HES issues. This trend drives a need to integrate health, environment, safety (HES) and medical professionals earlier in the business planning stages to conduct in-depth risk assessments. As new country entry organizational capability models typically include management personnel and representatives from finance, supply chain and legal, but tend to inadequately address unique HES and medical challenges such as extreme medical exposures (i.e. cholera, typhoid, malaria, hepatitis, and HIV), sub-standard medical infrastructure and HES workforce environments (i.e. clean water, medivacs capabilities, logistics and lodging) which are key risks for new investment opportunities. This paper proposes a simple, phased process that brings in HES and medical professionals during initial conception of new venture profiling and builds on early assessments to position companies to successfully manage new international developments.

If retirement activities are deferred too late in the life of an exploration and production (E&P) asset, the number of retirement activities (i.e. well abandonment, facility decommissioning, site remediation, land restoration) could potentially exceed the funds, resources and time available. Large inventories of inactive assets (e.g. idle wells and facilities) carried long-term further compound the potential budgetary, resource, and schedule shortfall at end-of-life. A set of operating practices has been developed to systematically manage asset retirement throughout an E&P asset's lifecycle, enabling completion of retirement activities at a rational pace in alignment with the business unit's cash flow profile, resource availability, and lifespan. These practices guide inventorying, prioritizing and managing abandonment-decommissioning candidates (e.g. wells, pipelines, and facilities designated for retirement or inactive long-term), remediation candidates (sites with potentially impacted environmental media; inactive pits) and restoration candidates (borrow pits or disturbed land designated for restoration or inactive long-term) as an integral component of the asset's business plan. Technical guidelines for suspension, abandonment, decommissioning, site assessment, remediation and restoration complement the operating practices by driving task execution to world-class technical standards. Use of the operating practices described in this paper will position E&P business units to manage asset retirement progressively and perform the activities to world-class technical standards.

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