A FELLOWSHIP PROGRAM to help prevent wildfires and restore forests in Mendocino County has been eliminated under proposed cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration. The cuts are ending GrizzlyCorps, a service program that places fellows in 11-month terms to support conservation efforts in rural communities.
The Trump administration has announced it is going to end $400 million in AmeriCorps grants nationwide, which will impact thousands of volunteers working throughout the U.S. GrizzlyCorps, a fellowship program under the federally funded AmeriCorps organization, was notified by email that it would be eliminated due to AmeriCorps funding cuts, according to documents provided by GrizzlyCorps.
Launched in 2020, the GrizzlyCorps program is a California-based fellowship overseen by the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment, in partnership with California Volunteers, a state agency that operates a large volunteer-matching network and helps manage efforts in communities with the greatest needs.
California Volunteers also oversees grants, hires members and ensures that AmeriCorps programs align with the state’s priorities. Fellows are placed in different organizations throughout California, including UC extensions, tribal governments and nonprofit organizations.
In this region, GrizzlyCorps has placed one fellow with Mendocino County’s Fire Safe Council and two others at the University of California’s Hopland Research and Extension Center. The fellows, who serve 11-month terms at their respective organizations, often work on fire mitigation, fire preparedness education and forest restoration efforts.
Eliza Munger, the director of GrizzlyCorps, said in an interview that the grant money GrizzlyCorps received from AmeriCorps was about $1.215 million, but she is unsure what percentage of that the program will be losing.
Munger said there are 42 GrizzlyCorps members serving in 20 counties across the state, and that many of these workers are young people who recently graduated from college and have ultimately felt like they had the rug pulled out from under them.
“We really focus on workforce development. Each year, over 30% of our fellows stay on their host sites as staff,” she said. “We typically have about 15% of our cohort that does a second year with our program. So that’s no longer an option for our fellows that would normally be staying on.”
According to Munger, the financial cuts to GrizzlyCorps will end the fellowship three months earlier than originally planned, a term that became effective at the beginning of May. This will not just impact the fellows’ workforce development but also halt the projects they planned to finish at their organizations.
“They’re losing about three months of their service term, which is a significant chunk of time out of an 11-month commitment,” Munger said. “This is usually when fellows are diving into their work, while also starting to plan for what’s next — looking for jobs, figuring out next steps. Now, they’ve lost that crucial time to wrap up their projects and prepare for the future.”
Education efforts take a hit
Scott Cratty, executive director of the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, said the cuts to GrizzlyCorps will significantly impact education programs for young people that fellows implemented over the past year.
Cratty said that their current fellow at the Fire Safe Council assisted in creating an education program for middle-school students to learn about fire science, but the council will not be able to continue the program without the resources provided by GrizzlyCorps and AmeriCorps.
“The program we developed with her support is impacted. She helped us launch a fire education program for middle schoolers — more than 700 students participated in a three-part curriculum,” he explained. “They learned about fire science, conducted experiments, and developed family emergency plans. Without AmeriCorps support, we never could’ve scaled a program like that. So now, we’re scrambling to figure out how to keep it going.”
Fortunately, for the fellow that was placed at the Mendocino County Fire Safe Council, her efforts in implementing local projects have earned her a full-time job at the organization beyond the duration of the fellowship.
“This program felt like a new way for me to start over. I was completely absorbed by this world, and I have a great working relationship with the Fire Safe Council,” Emily Lord, the current fellow with the council, said in an interview. “I feel like the opportunities that the fellowship has given me have turned things around. I am excited about what I am learning and who I am getting to interact with, after feeling like I was just floating through life.”
Lord said she is worried about other fellows in the program who are unsure what to do since the funding has been cut for their respective organizations.
“It’s devastating and sad to hear for other people,” Lord emphasized. “I am sad that these opportunities for other people would potentially be lost.”
Despite facing severe budget cuts, Munger, the director of GrizzlyCorps, said that the organization is hopeful that they will be able to find a source of funding for another cohort of fellows.
“This program felt like a new way for me to start over. I was completely absorbed by this world, and I have a great working relationship with the Fire Safe Council. … I am sad that these opportunities for other people would potentially be lost.” Emily Lord, GrizzlyCorps fellow
“Our hope is to come up with a sustainable solution for the program and, hopefully, relaunch sometime next year,” Munger said. “We’re aiming for early next year, but that depends on securing long-term funding.”
In late April, when the AmeriCorps cuts were first announced, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Attorney General Rob Bonta announced they were filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration over the defunding of AmeriCorps by the administration’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency.
About two dozen other states have joined the lawsuit, arguing the administration does not have the authority to slash funding for a program enacted by Congress decades ago.
The Mendocino Voice reached out to the Trump administration for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
This story originally appeared in The Mendocino Voice.