BUCKSPORT — Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust honored Bob Gomes of Bucksport as its 2014-2015 Volunteer of the Year at the land trust’s annual meeting on July 12.
In his two years of volunteering for the local conservation organization, Gomes has slogged through miles of snow and ice to check wood duck boxes, staffed booths at events such as the Cabin Fever Reliever, Bucksport Bay Festival and Orland Gun Show. He also helped chaperone 75 sixth-graders from Bucksport Middle School on a field trip to Orland’s Great Pond Mountain Wildlands.
Gomes has taken a number of opportunities to educate himself in the business of running a land trust, attending the past two Maine Land Conservation Conferences and other workshops. He also sits on the land trust’s stewardship committee and has become the road commissioner of sorts, taking on the gargantuan task of locating, gps-ing and marking the 130 culverts on Wildlands roads. He has spent many hours on land trust’s tractor since last summer, mowing, grading, raking and enduring hot sun, blackflies, deerflies and every other kind of fly. Gomes also used his connections at Lane Construction in November 2013 (he retired from the company in recent years), to encourage it to grade more than four miles of multi-use trails as a donation — saving the trust many hours and thousands of dollars in maintenance.
Gomes lives in Bucksport with his wife, Ruth, who also volunteers for the land trust.