Macclesfield conservationist Alan David Clayton has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the General Division for service to conservation, the environment, and to the community.
Mr Clayton who’s now retired and lives in Macclesfield since 2010, said the recognition came as a surprise and is something he sees as shared rather than personal.
“With surprise, and with the realisation that the work I’ve been doing has been alongside a wonderful group of colleagues and friends,” he said.
“It really should be a group award rather than an individual one.”
Mr Clayton has spent more than a decade deeply involved in conservation across the Dandenongs and Yarra Valley, particularly in threatened species recovery and community-led landcare.
A central focus of his work has been the helmeted honeyeater, Victoria’s bird emblem – through his long involvement with the Friends of the Helmeted Honeyeater, including serving as president from 2018 to 2022 and becoming a life member in 2023.
As president, he was closely involved in efforts to protect and expand habitat for the critically endangered bird, work that led to a broader shift in thinking.
“With the impact of climate change and all the threats to biodiversity, there was a realisation that to be effective we had to work at a landscape level, rather than as an individual project level,” he said.
That shift gave rise to the Yellingbo to Butterfield project, later evolving into the Beyond Yellingbo program, which works with private landholders outside the Yellingbo Nature Conservation Area, the program now involves 121 properties and partnerships with multiple Landcare and community groups.
From that work, an even more ambitious collaboration has emerged through the Nangana Landcare Network, which Mr Clayton helped co-establish in 2021 and now leads as president.
The network is working with a wide range of groups across the Yarra Valley on conservation efforts spanning around 120,000 hectares.
Looking back on his work, Mr Clayton said it has always been people who have tied it all together.
“It is the way that people from various backgrounds and perspectives can work together for the common good,” he said.
“There is also a shared recognition of the enormous threat that climate change and the continuing degradation of biodiversity presents to the ongoing survival of a large number of species, particularly endangered, vulnerable and threatened.”
Living in Macclesfield and the Dandenongs has shaped both his conservation work and community leadership.
“This is just a special environment with cool temperate rainforest. It’s just a special part of the world,” Clayton said.
Mr Clayton’s approach has also been strongly influenced by his Quaker faith of more than 45 years, grounded in values of simplicity, peace, integrity, community, equality and care for the earth.
“Absolutely fundamental,” he said of its influence on his life and work.
He hopes the OAM serves as encouragement for others rather than a full stop.
“I trust that this is an affirmation that this work is important and that others will follow and continue it,” he said.
Mr Clayton also paid tribute to his wife, Dorothy, describing her as a vital part of his journey.
“I could not do it without the amazing support of my wife, who has been equally involved in all this work,” he said.
“She’s a soulmate.”
Despite the honour, Mr Clayton shows no sign of slowing down, embracing what he describes as “working on wearing out rather than rusting out.”
