SIERRA NEVADA, Calif./Nev. – At least 16 AmeriCorps members in the Tahoe Basin were terminated essentially overnight after the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cut funding to the AmeriCorps program nationwide on Sunday, April 27. Many members were around halfway through their service term.

“This is not just about losing funding,” Jenny Hatch said, executive director of the Sierra Nevada Alliance, “It’s about losing the very infrastructure that has made meaningful conservation possible in our region.”

Hatch explains the grants were cut in the middle of the fiscal year and describes it as unprecedented.

The unexpected cut resulted in AmeriCorps members arriving to work on Monday, April 28, just to be told to go home and not return on Tuesday. Those included the Sierra Nevada Alliance’s ten in the Tahoe region and 25 total over the entire Sierra Nevada. The ten in the Tahoe Basin serve at host sites such as the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, Trout Unlimited Truckee Chapter, Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, Sierra House Elementary School, and Sierra Club Tahoe Area Group. The cuts impacted another two CivicSpark AmeriCorps fellows with South Tahoe Public Utility District, and four with the City of South Lake Tahoe (co-hosted with South Tahoe Refuse and South Tahoe Fire Rescue). Many of the members moved from other parts of the country for the opportunity.

“I know a lot of programs just literally have ceased and everybody’s just in shock,” Hatch said. “Everyone’s trying to gather and try and figure out what’s next.”

Many organizations and agencies are scrambling to find ways to retain the members and allow them to finish out their 11-month term with roughly 4-5 months left. The SNA, for example, launched a donation initiative to retain their members as paid interns.

The AmeriCorps members help build capacity at host departments and organizations with vital roles in restoration projects, monitoring, environmental education, and volunteer engagement.

“The capacity this program provides is simply irreplaceable,” Hatch says.

Since 2007, SNA hosted AmeriCorps members have restored over 25,000 acres of land, monitored 8,000 watershed sites, and reached more than 250,000 individuals through environmental education and outreach.

At STPUD, members have been integral in building capacity in both the water conservation program and engineering department.

“For the future,” says STPUD’s Shelly Thomsen, director of public and legislative affairs, “a lot of this work won’t be done. We’ll have to scale back.”

The mutually beneficial partnership costs the host much less than a full-time employee and offers a longer term than seasonal employees. For the AmeriCorps members, these opportunities are often an entry point into larger careers.

“It’s really been the biggest pipeline of creating conservation careers in our region while doing a lot of great work on the ground,” Hatch says, who has seen many fellows go on to become executive directors of organizations or agencies. The SNA’s 18-year history with AmeriCorps has seen over 500 fellows through the program.

Hatch herself and many colleagues in the field started out as an AmeriCorps member. “Almost everybody I know in my field started out or has done AmeriCorps in the past.”

Other organizations, though not losing boots on the ground, are still impacted by the cuts. The California Conservation Corps, which has a Tahoe center, expects the AmeriCorps cuts to impact two of its programs, the Watershed Stewards Program and the Backcountry Trails Program. The state commission (California Volunteers) distributes AmeriCorps grants to the CCC to operate these two special programs. This has sent the CCC on a hunt to assess other funding options and stipends.

Nationwide, the action has impacted over 1,000 programs and 32,000 members.

The cuts have already been met with lawsuits from the State of California and nearly two dozen other states against the Trump Administration.