Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve has presented its 2020 Paul Schaefer Wilderness Award, the organization’s highest honor, to Kevin Chlad, Director of Government Relations for the Adirondack Council, with offices in Elizabethtown and in Albany.

Adirondack Wild has admired Kevin’s work for a number of years,” said Adirondack Wild’s managing partner David Gibson. “We’ve worked with him as part of a coalition of Adirondack groups and we’ve noticed how he steers citizen advocacy for the Adirondack Park in very productive directions, just as Paul Schaefer used to do. He puts himself in the shoes of others and lets them take the credit to advance Park goals. That was Paul Schaefer’s way of accomplishing great things for the Adirondacks.”

Paul Schaefer in the Adirondacks in 1989.
Photo by Paul Grondahl for the Albany Times Union

In 2016 Chlad organized volunteers from across the state for the Adirondack Park Wilderness Campaign. That has resulted in a Wilderness classification for the Boreas Ponds and to the most significant expansion of the High Peaks Wilderness area in decades. His persistence each year also results in more funding for Forest Preserve stewardship.

Adirondack Wild’s Ken Rimany adds his thanks to Kevin Chlad “not only for all that you continue to do to preserve the wild of the Adirondacks today, but also, as Paul Schaefer would often remind us, for the ‘youth of distant tomorrows’ as well.”

The Paul Schaefer Wilderness Award is named for foremost 20^th century wilderness champion and Adirondack coalition leader Paul Schaefer (1908-1996). Schaefer founded Adirondack Wild’s forerunner, Friends of the Forest Preserve 75 years ago in 1945. In 1996, Schaefer was named as one of 100 of the nation’s most influential conservation leaders by Audubon magazine.

The award presentation took place at the Kelly Adirondack Center of Union College. Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve is a not for profit, membership organization devoted to the protection of wild lands through advocacy, found on the web at www.adirondackwild.org.

Photo at top: Kevin Chlad receives the 2020 Paul Schaefer Wilderness Award from Adirondack Wild, Nov. 18, 2020 at the Kelly Adirondack Center of Union College