GOSHEN — Mariel Hohmann learned her federal stipend was canceled late last month while she was welcoming 35 hikers to a brand-new trail network at Clary Hill in Goshen.
She had completed coordinating volunteers working a total of 700 hours to build the trails on the 132-acre property owned by Hilltown Land Trust.
Her stipend was cut along with $400 million in grant program funding for AmeriCorps. The cuts pulled funding from 32,000 volunteers working across the United States, from college age volunteers to seniors and mid-life career changers.
The cuts will also likely spell the end for TerraCorps, an agency in Windham, New Hampshire that sent 43 AmeriCorps-funded members to 40 land conservation, environmental education and agricultural organizations in both Massachusetts and Rhode Island this year.
The grants were for the 2024 fiscal year, said David Graham Wolf, TerraCrops president and CEO, in a statement. The funding was already approved by Congress, and it was meant to cover specific expenses, including living allowances for TerraCorps members through a service term that ends July 25.
“This sudden termination of grants is already having a detrimental impact — ending the service of our 43 TerraCorps members three months early, stunting critical capacity needed by local nonprofits to achieve their missions, and likely shuttering TerraCorps,” Wolf said.
That includes Hohmann who worked as a land stewardship coordinator, Hilltown Land Trust said Friday. Partner organization Kestrel Land Trust hosts three positions: two land stewardship coordinators and a youth education coordinator.
In Holyoke, Nuestras Raices also hosted AmericaCorps conservation workers from TerraCorps. The Trustees of Reservations is also one of the work sites with two TerraCorps workers in its ecology team. Hilltown is an affiliate of the Trustees.
“It’s so unfortunate that their funding was terminated because TerraCorps is an important part of building the next generation of land conservation professionals,” said Trustees of Reservations spokesperson Mary Detloff. “These are young people with a true passion for conservation and sustainability. TerraCorps connects them with organizations like ours to further their experience.”
The total annual cost of a service member is approximately $38,061, including a $27,666 living stipend, TerraCorps said. Host agencies, like Hilltown Land Trust, contribute to the cost on a sliding scale depending on the hosting agency’s budget.
Now, Hilltown Land Trust and Kestrel Land Trust are scrambling to raise money to support their AmeriCorps team members through the last three months of their commitment. And then — according to a statement both trusts’ issued Friday — they must raise money to hire workers to do the tasks they once relied on AmeriCorps and TerraCorps for.
“We are dedicated to doing what we must do to keep our members going,” said Kari Blood, Kestrel’s community engagement director, who served in Kestrel’s first AmeriCorps cohort.
Sarah Welch, community engagement manager for Hilltown Land Trust, is also a former TerraCorps participant.
Hilltown Land Trust TerraCorps member Mariel Hohmann sets up a trail camera. (Submitted photo)The Republican
“We’ll be OK in the short term,” Welch said Friday. “We are using private funding to support our members for the next three month as they are going to continue working for us.”
But Hilltown Land Trust is going to need someone to build trails, organize activities and check on conserved land.
“We have a really great problem in that more people come to us wanting to preserve their land then we have the capacity to conserve,” Welch said. “But we now need to backfill into filling out how to care for that land once it is conserved. A huge part of that growth has been sustained by TerraCorps members.”
Springfield native Michael D. Smith, appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022 to lead AmeriCorps, resigned at the end of Biden’s term. Having grown up in the McKnight neighborhood, Smith cited the Springfield Boys and Girls Club among other institutions supported by AmericCorps as crucial to his success.
Smith once told crowds in Springfield that at AmeriCorps he had “the best job in the federal government.”
