ByNature.com: Local AmeriCorps Fellows Lose Jobs, Leaving Oaks Unplanted and Career Prospects Unclear

By Kate Yoder – May 15, 2025

Over the past eight months, Christian Noriega, 22, collected a few thousand acorns at Blue Oak Ranch Reserve, about 10 miles outside San José, sprouted them, and planted 120 seedlings of blue, valley, and black oak trees. He also planted native California brome, purple needlegrass, and blue wildrye, and cut channels along mountain ridges in the rain to prevent roads from overflooding. But Noriega’s main focus was leading hikes for middle and high school students from east San José, near his hometown, teaching them about the oak trees at the reserve. Like them, Noriega hadn’t had much access to the outdoors while growing up. He enjoyed telling students to be like his favorite tree, a blue oak, by being “resilient to change and to any challenges that face you,” he says.

Last week Noriega faced his own challenge—a termination notice—as President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed $400 million from the federal agency AmeriCorps and placed 85 percent of its staff on administrative leave, leaving young service-minded fellows like Noriega across the nation in the lurch. AmeriCorps employs more than 200,000 people in the United States annually, and nearly 7,000 in California. These volunteers, largely young people, perform service work from language education to disaster relief. In the Bay Area, 155 out of 806 fellows do nature-related fellowships. Ninety of those 155 fellowships have now been terminated.