Last July, Dan Ruthrauff was on the North Slope with colleagues, outfitting black brant with metal leg bands. It was the sort of thing he did year after year as a federal research biologist.
He wishes he was still working as a federal scientist, adding to the knowledge of Alaska shorebirds, migration patterns and reproductive ecology.
But Ruthrauff is now listed as a former employee of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center. His last official day at the office was in mid-April. It’s not how Ruthrauff wanted to end his 24-year career.
“I had a lot of irons in the fire, and many projects that I was still working on,” he said. “And I, you know, am lamenting the fact that those aren't going to be able to happen.”
He’s among about 10 colleagues who quit in mid-April, out of 62 people who worked in his USGS ecosystems unit.
Across Alaska, hundreds of federal employees are losing their jobs. Diminishing the federal workforce is a central goal of President Trump’s, and a hallmark of the first 100 days of Trump’s second term. Alaska is especially reliant on federal jobs. While the loss is hitting home for some Alaskans now, it’ll be months before we can quantify that impact.
Ruthrauff considers himself lucky, compared to some of his colleagues. With the so-called “Fork in the Road” incentives, he could retire early without penalty. He feels for the co-workers who had to leave under less favorable terms. And he’s sad for the science that won’t be completed.
“We believe in what we do, and we believe in the value that we bring to the public,” he said. “So when that started being denigrated and undervalued, it became really difficult, and it's been a lot of anxiety at work as we started to recognize that lack of appreciation for this very basic research.”
USGS is part of the Department of Interior, which is one of the largest components of Alaska's federal workforce. In total, about 15,000 Alaskans worked for the federal government when Trump took office this year. No one can yet say how many have since been fired, or took incentives to quit or retire.
“That has been a big question, a gaping question,” said Brock Wilson, assistant professor of economics at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, part of the University of Alaska Anchorage.
“What everyone wants to know is the magnitude” of the job losses, he said. “And that has been really challenging to make any firm conclusion about.”
The state of Alaska says more than 230 federal workers have filed unemployment claims. Those might be some of the 1,400 probationary workers in Alaska. Probationary workers were among the first targeted for firing.
But Wilson cautions that the number of unemployment claims aren’t all that telling, since some of the probationary workers were rehired, some fired a second time, and some continued to receive pay for a time despite getting emails saying they’d been fired. Wilson says that’s just one moving piece that confuses the federal employment picture. Another, he says, is that people who took the Fork in the Road incentives are on different path.
“In fact, they may have gotten another job elsewhere, and so you wouldn't see that movement in unemployment,” he said.
The best indicator, Wilson said, will be payroll data – how many Alaskans receive federal paychecks now compared to a year prior. The government releases those figures about half a year after the fact, so it will be a few months before we know how much the Trump administration has shrunk Alaska’s federal workforce.
As for the remaining researchers at the Alaska Science Center, more job losses are likely. The journal Science reports that the White House is expected to ask Congress to defund the entire biological research program at the U.S. Geological Survey. The Project 2025 blueprint, which the Trump administration is largely following, calls for abolishing it and obtaining “necessary scientific research about species of concern” from universities by competitive bid.
Ruthrauff, the biologist studying birds, said he’s pretty sure the agency will discontinue his work.
“In the short term, for sure it's just not going to happen. We don't have the bodies to do it,” he said. “And if the 2026 budget is any indication, there literally won't be the organization to do it.”
Some of his colleagues work on species with obvious economic value to Alaska, like salmon, and Ruthrauff said bird-watching and hunting add to Alaska’s economy. Beyond that, he said, “birds bring all of us joy.”
The data he’s collected over his career is archived. He hopes future scientists will one day use it to help maintain healthy bird populations.
