Lifetime Service Award - 2015
The Public Lands Foundation grants to Beaumont “Beau” McClure its Lifetime Service Award for excellence in public land management. The Foundation provides this award to deserving members who have perpetuated and enhanced the proud tradition of public service. Beau exemplifies that tradition through a lifetime of service in managing and protecting the public lands.
Beau was born and raised in Woodlake, California, and graduated from Colorado State University in 1964 with a degree in Forestry. He began his forestry career with a private logging company in Oregon, but soon went to work for the Bureau of Land Management at the BLM’s Tillamook Resource Area Office, in Tillamook, Oregon. His first job was “marking trees” for harvest.
In 1965, he was drafted into the U. S. Army and spent his two military service years in Georgia and Texas, before returning to BLM at Tillamook in 1967. In 1969, he was promoted to the BLM’s Ukiah District Office, to work on timber trespass problems on public lands in northwestern California.
In 1974, Beau was recruited to the BLM’s Washington, D.C. Headquarters Office and for the next 10 years he served as the BLM’s and the Department of Interior’s principle advisor, coordinator, and contact person for the implementation of the unique and special Alaska Statehood and Native Claims Settlement programs. This was a role that required him to spend a lot of time in Alaska, and to be effective in dealing with wide spectrum of Federal, State and Native American leaders.
In 1984, Beau moved back to the West into the position of Chief of Resources in the BLM’s Arizona State Office in Phoenix. At the time of his retirement in 2005, he was serving as the Department of the Interior’s Special Assistant for International Programs, stationed at the BLM’s Arizona State Office in Phoenix, and helping to insure that the public land resources were considered and protected during Homeland Security actions to control illegal immigration and drugs.
Throughout his career, Beau McClure has been the ultimate program manager and staff person wherever he has served. His exceptional ability to plan, organize and provide oversight to public land management programs has benefited the public lands and the people who use them wherever he has served. And his accomplishments are well documented in the BLM and the Department of the Interior.
When Beau retired from BLM in 2005, he had a business card printed which reads:
“Beau McClure
Border, Desert, and Natural Resource Issues
Coordinator, Meeting Organizer, etc.”
He has continued to work nearly full time on these issues and in these roles for most of the past 10 years; however, not as a well paid consultant for private companies or individuals, but as the volunteer Vice President for Operations for the Public Lands Foundation.
Beau McClure brought the same talents to the PLF that he served him well in the BLM. He has helped reorganize the PLF, redefine its mission statement and its internal procedures, improve coordination between Board members and get their input to advocacy letters and activities. He leads the way in planning for PLF’s Annual meetings and keeping the Board aware of and involved in issues affecting the BLM and the BLM lands.
The PLF thanks Beaumont “Beau” McClure for his career of service to the BLM, and for his untiring work over the years in providing expertise and guidance in the conduct of PLF’s business and the holding of the annual meetings, as well as may other quietly performed contributions to the organization.
The Public Lands Foundation is honored to recognize Beaumont “Beau” McClure with this Lifetime Service Award, presented by PLF President Ed Shepard at the Foundation’s Annual Meeting in Phoenix, Arizona on September 24, 2015.