Bill McClung passed away on July 27, 2020. Please feel free to leave a remembrance or comment at the end of this page. More on Bill McClung can be found here.
Bill flashes a smile as he pauses from his work of clearing trails near Signpost 29 along with Cal students in 2006.
Bill has meant so much to our community that it is hard to capture his impact in a few sentences. After the 1991 fire that brought so much death and destruction to our Berkeley and Oakland hills, Bill made it his life’s passion and work to inspire all of us to create a well-managed safe environment.
Proper management of vegetation became the message he sought to communicate and embody in numerous ways. His beloved University Press books was filled with books on ecology, the environment, California, and natural history.
Bill started a company, Shelterbelt, which was meant to not just take on the management of specific parcels, most especially the Vicente Canyon Hillside Foundation property, but to model the prototype of a vegetation management company which could reduce the risk of fire and function fiscally as a business. With his son John, Shelterbelt still manages the VCHF hillside.
Bill realized that a sustained regional approach was needed. Along with a few other like-minded individuals, he founded the Claremont Canyon Conservancy and sought and gathered substantial lifetime commitments from hundreds of residents and local businesses to insure its success.
With the publications “News from the Buffer Zone” and eventually the Claremont Canyon Conservancy newsletter, he tirelessly propagated key ideas like “buffer zones” in reducing the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Bill, no youngster, was nevertheless out in our canyons throwing his body and passion into one strenuous work project after another. He was the model of kindness and care in all he did, taking young people under his wing and kindling a love of the earth and California nature wherever he could. With his family, his own home and property became a flourishing little farm, goats serving as attractions for the childcare and youth groups that visited the property and the Hillside Foundation. Love and proper stewardship of the natural landscape were values he and his family tried to exemplify and instill in others.
The University Press Bookstore founded in 1974 was a casualty of many factors, most notably and finally Covid-19, went under a few weeks ago. And now Bill is gone too. Like many others, I will sorely miss his wise, genial and authentic presence immensely. In so many ways, we all owe him so much. What a kind, generous and thoughtful person he was.
David Kessler is an original Founding Sponsor of the Claremont Canyon Conservancy.
