Foundation Part of Major Conservation Effort

Picture to the right are Peggy Mehnert, Amos Orcutt, Bucky Owen, and Jerry Longcore.

The University of Maine Foundation is part of a successful larger effort to create an unbroken green conservation corridor for wildlife and recreation from Bangor's residential and commercial districts to the northern end of Pushaw Lake in Hudson. The corridor encompasses the 2,200-acre Caribou Bog, the Orono Bog with its hugely successful Orono Bog Boardwalk, the shores of Pushaw Lake, a nine-mile lake with beautiful marshy shores, a large pond that is completely undeveloped and a 1,500-acre private wildlife preserve.

The Caribou Bog-Penjajawoc Lands Project (Corridor Project), a joint venture of Orono Land Trust and Bangor Land Trust established in May 2007, includes nearly 20 partners, ranging from the municipalities of Brewer, Bangor, Orono, Old Town, and Veazie, state agencies, University of Maine, University of Maine Foundation and other non-profit organizations.

The University of Maine Foundation, with permission of the Birmingham family who originally donated the land to the University of Maine Foundation, has deeded a 1,000-plus acre tract of land to the project.

"We are very pleased to be part of this important conservation effort," says Amos E. Orcutt, president and CEO of the Foundation. "We are grateful to Les and Jo Birmingham of Freeport for their gift and for their support of the Foundation deeding the land to the Corridor Project. In addition to preserving a large corridor of significant habitat for wildlife and wetlands for waterfowl, this project offers multiple opportunities for the public to view wildlife, both migrating birds and year-round resident wildlife, in their natural settings. There is no other place quite like it."