AUGUSTA – State officials earmarked more than $12 million on Tuesday for land conservation across Maine, including projects to protect a unique bog outside of Bangor and a 26,000-acre tract in Hancock County.

Commissioners on the Land for Maine’s Future board were faced with deciding how to spread the voter-approved bonds among 32 proposals seeking a total of $22 million. The LMF program works with partner groups to conserve high-value recreational land, wildlife habitat, farmland and working waterfront lands through easements or outright purchase.

In the end, the board voted to partially finance all but one of the projects based on a points-driven formula that considers the “naturalness” of the land, ease of public access and development pressure on the property, among other factors. Because the projects did not receive full funding, many may be scaled back or delayed.

Projects range from historic farms with 100 acres to miles of riverfront and entire mountains. They include:

. 25,945 acres in Hancock County known as the “Great Pond and Lower Penobscot Forest.” Project planners, who received $862,000, hope the forest will become part of a 42,000-acre tract of conservation land stretching from Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Milford to Amherst.

. 4,821 acres along the Moose River near Moosehead Lake that includes the ecologically sensitive No. 5 Bog. The Nature Conservancy and several other groups, which are trying to acquire the land from Plum Creek Timber Co., were allocated $794,000.

. 37,000 acres of Katahdin Iron Works in T7 R9. The project received $250,000 to help buy a conservation easement on the land.

. More than 1,000 acres in Caribou Bog, which lines the eastern shores of Pushaw Lake from Hudson to Bangor. That project, which is a collaborative effort of several local land trusts, will receive $446,000.

Like nearly every applicant, the leaders of the Caribou Bog-Penjajawoc Project did not get all of the money they were seeking from the LMF. But project chairwoman Sally Jacobs said she was pleased nonetheless given the competition for limited resources.

Jacobs said the groups leading the project – the Orono Land Trust and the Bangor Land Trust – will just have to do some “creative financing” to continue their work to protect a corridor for wildlife while development continues in the Bangor area.

“We are very thrilled,” Jacobs said Tuesday evening.

Kent Price and Colin Baker of Great Pond Mountain Conservation Trust also walked away from Tuesday’s meeting pleased.

The land trust received $346,000 of the $500,000 they requested to help finance their efforts in Great Pond Mountain Wildlands, 4,200 acres of conservation land near Orland. Price and Baker said the small land trust took a big financial risk by purchasing the 4,200 acres, so they were pleased to receive state help.

“This is land for everybody in a place that they can access,” Price said. “They don’t have to go a long way … and when you get there, it feels like wilderness.”

Under LMF rules, all applicants must match at least one-third of the total project cost to be eligible. All land funded through the LMF program must remain open to the public and can only be acquired from willing sellers.

Started in 1987, the LMF program has successfully conserved more than 200,000 acres to date, not including the projects approved Tuesday.

Voters last approved a $12 million LMF bond package in October 2005. Nearly all of that money is now spent, although some is still available in the farmland and working waterfront funds, said LMF director Tim Glidden.

If the Legislature approves a bond referendum in 2007, and voters approve, LMF should have money to dispense again in 2008, Glidden said.

“As we sit here today, we know there is no new conservation or recreation allocation in Maine for two years,” he said.