As the Trump administration continues to slice budgets across federal agencies, the impacts of those decisions are directly impacting the Wareham Land Trust.

As a result, Americorps, a national volunteer organization, recently had $400 million cut from its budget and thousands of volunteers across the country have been pulled from their projects.

TerraCorps is one of the many subsections of Americorps and sends recent college graduates looking to get a foot in the door of conservation to a variety of environmental agencies, including the Wareham Land Trust.

Due to the cuts, it is likely TerraCorps will be forced to stop sending volunteers to assist agencies in their environmental goals.

Wareham Land Trust Executive Director Alexandra Zollo explained over the last 11 years, TerraCorps volunteers have put in 1700 hours of work annually for the land trust. With TerraCorps likely ending, the organization could struggle to meet its goals.

“We as an organization are trying to figure out ways to increase our capacity, it’s a huge loss to the community,” said Zollo. “We will have to look at how we operate and we will need to restructure a bit.”

Current service member Julia Ledo is in her second year with the land trust and though she expects her time to be cut three months short, the land trust will hire her at the end of her service time.

“You’re working with volunteers, doing events and also learn about conservation,” Ledo said. “I had no clue about this side of conservation so it explodes your network and your experience.”

Ledo said service members are required to do three projects during their year of service and her favorites have been projects centered around educating kids on the natural world around them.

“I made this whole 16 week curriculum based around flora and fauna in Wareham with an emphasis on kids learning observation skills,” she said. “I wrote and acquired a grant from the Wareham Cultural Council two years in a row to acquire permanent supplies for this curriculum.”

Part of this curriculum is a game she said kids have come to love.

“The famous one is our scat game where kids learn why it’s important to identify scat and try your best to match different scats with the animals,” she said.

And she added projects like this are not something the land trust has done consistently.

“[The land trust] didn’t have a way to engage people at a table other than talking about the land trust,” she said. “Younger visitors were just standing there while their parents were being spoken to and it wasn’t a great way to engage with people.”

As TerraCorps and the land trust take strides to create new ways to engage younger audiences, Ledo said the chance to do so has given her an opportunity she would not have had elsewhere.

“One of TerraCorps’ strong suits is that it is so much easier to get noticed by employers who are looking for people like us,” she said. “There’s a whole alumni network so when I go to conferences there’s a TerraCorps alum who wants to talk to me about my service.”