Local Wildlife Manager earns Game & Fish's highest honor

Ken Clay III shares another distinction with his father other than their name. The father and son duo are also recipients of the Arizona of Game & Fish Department's top award for Wildlife Managers.

Ken Clay III was chosen from 80 peers to receive this year's Allen Severson Memorial Regional Supervisors Award ‹ the highest honor the state agency presents to its Wildlife Managers.

"I was surprised and humbled," he said.

Similar to a Most Valuable Player Award in sports, the Game & Fish Department honor recognizes Wildlife Managers for excellence in every aspect of the job ‹ education, law enforcement and wildlife, fisheries and habitat management.

"Ken provides a good model of what a Wildlife Manager is and should be doing, because he more than adequately makes certain all areas of responsibilityŠ is given adequate coverage and time," according to his nomination papers.

Ken Clay, Jr., earned the award in 1983 when it was known as the Wildlife Manager of the Year. The Clays are the fourth father-son team to be given the honor.

Clay said that within the agency it's known as the Blue Quail Award because recipients receive a turquoise quail to attach to their nametag. He also received a plaque recognizing the honor, which he was handed at a banquet before all of his peers.

Ken Clay, Jr. retired from the Game and Fish Department in 1998 but is still proud to have received the award and that his son has now too.

"I thought it was a pretty neat honor," he said. "When all the Regional Supervisors bestow an award, it's pretty prestigious, which makes you feel pretty good."

A resident of Five Mountain Acres, Ken Clay III manages a territory that begins at the Clear Creek reservoir to the Mogollon Rim and Coconino and Apache-Sitgreaves Forests, or an area roughly the size of Phoenix.

His district includes some of the busiest lakes and streams in the state making law enforcement of the area difficult but not impossible, he said.

Winslow nor his own neighborhood technically is within his jurisdiction. However, he has assisted in many issues involving local ranchers and farmers and in containing an ever-expanding elk herd.

Clay also spends many hours offering community outreach programs including wildlife presentations to sixth graders every year, hunter education programs and career fairs.

Of the various responsibilities Wildlife Managers are responsible for, habitat preservation has been most important to Clay.

"I think it's important to implement and complete projects to benefit wildlife not only wildlife next week, but for the next 10 or 15 years," he said.

The challenge, Clay said, is to manage human population growth and sprawl with land conservation.

Clay is a member of the Habitat Partnership Committee, which works with landowners, government agencies and ranchers to work on issues of economic and environmental sustainability. Rather than seeing the issues as adversarial to each other, Clay has worked with developers to make them allies of the department rather than enemies.

When his son, Kody, was diagnosed with cancer in 2002, Clay still worked part-time to ensure his district was as well cared for as his son. Clay's supervisor noted that it was during this crisis in his life that Clay proved himself a "natural-born Wildlife Manager."

"I'm in a very gratifying position," Clay said.