More federal workers were fired in Alaska Thursday, this time at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA.
Agency staff could not confirm how many people were fired from NOAA offices in the Juneau area.
Aaron Lambert, a fisheries management specialist, says he was one of at least four people who cleared out their desks at NOAA’s Alaska Regional Office in the Federal Building downtown.
Lambert says he saw it coming – he was a ‘probationary employee’ who was with the agency for six months. But that didn’t buoy the “sinking feeling” when he received the email at 11:35 a.m. Thursday officially firing him because his “ability, knowledge and/or skills do not fit the agency’s current needs,” according to the email.
“This is a little ridiculous, as I received multiple positive performance reviews from two different managers,” Lambert said, adding that he even received an award recognizing his work there.
His job was to estimate how many salmon are in Southcentral’s Cook Inlet, and how many need to return and reproduce each year to support a sustainable fishery.
“It’s really important for making sure you harvest enough of the fish, but also allow for conservation to have a future fishery essentially,” Lambert said.
It’s the only federally managed coastal salmon fishery in Alaska, and funnels millions of dollars into the state each year.
Lambert said NOAA’s sustainable fisheries department at the regional office in Juneau was already a lean operation.
“There’s a good chance that next year the stock assessment won’t be conducted, and if someone does end up doing it, they’ll be pulled off a different project,” he said. “Work is already spread amongst pretty sparse staff there.”
Staff at NOAA’s National Weather Service office in Juneau put out free forecasts and are developing community warning systems for landslides and glacial outburst floods in Southeast Alaska. Agency staff could not confirm Friday whether NWS staff were included in the cuts.
The Southeast Alaska Landslide Information and Preparedness Partnership sent an email to its subscribers in support of the agency: “Here in Southeast Alaska we depend on weather forecasts for our livelihoods and our life blood,” it read. “Fishermen, hunters, hikers, boaters, subsistence food gatherers and people who enjoy the natural world make decisions based on NWS forecasts. It’s a critical life safety service. And we are saddened this administration cut forecasters in our regional office.”
Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE and headed by billionaire Elon Musk, says public servants were let go to slash government spending. The directive is receiving significant public pushback. Wages and benefits for public servants make up just 4% of the federal budget.
The federal government is the second largest employer in Juneau. The most recent city data shows 709 federal employees worked here in 2024. The terminations come after the U.S. Forest Service lost dozens of Juneau-based employees this month. Layoffs are expected to strike more agencies soon.
