George Miksch Sutton Avian Research Center

ConocoPhillips has been a key financial sponsor of the Sutton Avian Research Center in Bartlesville, OK, since its inception in 1984. This premier research facility focuses on identifying the precipitous decline of certain bird populations and on breeding programs to restore endangered species.

The center's staff is dedicated to finding cooperative conservation solutions for birds and the natural world through science and education. The scope of its projects ranges from the reintroduction of Southern Bald Eagles and intensive field research on declining grassland birds, to the captive breeding of endangered species and raptor surveys world wide, to the use of NASA thermal-imaging cameras to study incubation temperature.

Between 1984 and 1992, the Sutton Center raised and released 275 Southern Bald Eagles in the southeastern United States. Partially as a result of these efforts, the Bald Eagle population in most areas of the United States by 1995 had increased sufficiently for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to upgrade the status of most populations from "Endangered" to "Threatened."

The Sutton Center is a private, non-profit organization affiliated with the University of Oklahoma's Oklahoma Biological Survey.