The Senate is expected to consider a nomination.  The House is in recess for the week.

The Arctic in new National Ocean Policy

"Changing Conditions in the Arctic" is the focus of a strategic action plan that's being developed under the "National Ocean Policy" signed by President Obama in July 2010. A 10-page draft outline of this plan is now available at a White House website for review and comment (and please do comment...). This plan is one of nine national priority objectives, and it's the only one focusing on a specific geographic region. The plan contains long-term themes, and six specific actions, below, to begin in 2012, when the final plan is released. The plan is being drafted by an interagency team co-led by Robert Winokur (Navy) and John Farrell (USARC). Public listening sessions on this effort will begin this week, including two in Alaska (June 9, Barrow, and June 10, Anchorage), and in DC (June 9). Details on the sessions are here.

Themes:

· An integrated Arctic observing network

· Arctic climate and environmental change (understand, forecast, predict)

· Arctic mapping and charting

· A safe, secure, and reliable Arctic Marine Transportation System

· Stewardship of the Arctic marine environment and sustainable development of resources

· Resilient and healthy Arctic communities and economies

· Domestic and international policy and partnerships in the Arctic

Actions:

      1: Improve Arctic environmental response management

      2: Observe and forecast Arctic sea ice

      3: Establish a distributed biological observatory

      4: Improve Arctic communication

      5: Advance Arctic marine mapping and charting

      6: Improve coordination on Arctic Ocean issues

This Week in Congress. The Senate will consider the nomination of Donald Virrilli, Jr. to be solicitor general.  Senate appropriation subcommittees will hold hearings on FY 2012 spending bills.  The Senate Armed Services Committee will also hold a hearing on the nomination of Leon Panetta to be the next Defense Secretary.  The House is in recess this week. Congressional Quarterly

AK State policy leads Beluga team to remove State scientists. INDEPENDENCE: Beluga recovery team must continue without two Alaska experts. A Parnell administration rule that requires state scientists to adhere to official policy and not the principles of independent science when they work outside their agencies continues to fuel debate more than a month after two biologists were removed from a federal beluga whale recovery team. The state biologists were kicked off the beluga panel because the rule compromised the scientific integrity of the team, federal officials said. "The situation is unfortunate," said Leslie Cornick, an associate professor of marine biology and policy at Alaska Pacific University. "What you have is the politicians silencing their state-employed biologists, and the politicians, who don't know anything about interpreting scientific data, are interpreting scientific data in a way that fits their agenda." Anchorage Daily News 

Balancing Environment, Development. The eight-nation Arctic Council met in Nuuk, Greenland, the week before last and produced a declaration of policy and action that is at once a culmination of three decades of rising interest in the Arctic, and a manifestation of the dramatic new challenges being generated by global climate change. A relatively recent creation, in 1991, the Arctic Council was formed to promote intergovernmental protection of the Arctic environment. Russia, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark with its dependencies of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Canada and the U.S. are full members. Attendees at the Nuuk meeting, the seventh ministerial gathering since the Council's inception, included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Alaska's U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Anchorage Daily News

Our Alaska: Ice Pile-up in Kotzebue

Kotzebue Alaska Ice pile up Front st. 2011

Kotzebue, Alaska sits above the Arctic Circle -- on the state's western coast. Because of its northerly location, the city gets to watch the sea ice freeze and thaw in the Kotzebue Sound. For residents of Front Street, they get to step out their front doors in winter and look out over a chunky frozen landscape. For a little while, the sheet of Arctic ice extends onto the shore, to the point where it comes a-knockin' at the front door of one of the houses lining the street. According to the uploader, the last time this happened, the ice actually made it into a resident's home, damaging a snowmachine and a car in the process. Alaska Dispatch 

Joining Forces for Arctic Forecast. Travelers in the Arctic can now get navigational warnings and weather forecast all the way to the North Pole.  Meteorological services in Norway, Russia and Canada will broadcast updated warnings on weather, wind and the ice edge twice a day. Barents Observer

Why Does it Matter if Arctic Sea Ice Melts? Why does it matter if the Arctic sea ice melts? We often hear about the global consequences: waning sea ice is expected to lead to even more climate warming. On a more immediate and local level, the loss of summer sea ice is already affecting the land and people near the Arctic Ocean. As the ice melts to reveal the open ocean underneath, fragile coastlines become vulnerable to bigger waves and storms. Alaska Dispatch 

New Group Wants Amundsen Ship to Stay in Canada. A group of citizens in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, is fighting to keep the wreck of the Maud, a ship that once belonged to famed polar explorer Roald Amundsen, from being lifted out of Canadian waters and taken to Norway.  The Maud, also known as the Baymaud, has been sitting partially submerged in the shallow waters near Cambridge Bay, a remote community of about 1,500, for the past eight decades. Eye on the Arctic 

Nunavut Health Minister Defends Suicide Remark. Nunavut Health Minister Tagak Curley was on the defensive this week over a comment he made to a national newspaper, in which he said suicide "isn't such a big problem anymore" in the territory.  About 30 people gathered in the gallery of the Nunavut legislature in Iqaluit on Tuesday, hoping that Curley would explain the remark he made in a Globe and Mail feature in April. "Suicide isn't such a big problem anymore," Curley told the newspaper in a feature about Nunavut's social problems, which include suicide and alcohol abuse. Fourteen people have committed suicide in Nunavut, a territory of about 33,000, so far this year. Last year, 29 Nunavummiut took their own lives. Eye on the Arctic

Science Expedition to Observe Whale Migration in the Arctic. Radio Canada International's Marc Montgomery talks to Christopher Debicki, the Nunavut Director for the Pew Environment Group's Oceans North Canada as he prepares to lead an Arctic science expedition that'll be tracking one of the world's greatest whale migrations. The scientists will spend a month aboard a tiny research ship observing narwhal, belugas and bowhead whales as they make their way from their wintering grounds in central Baffin Bay through Lancaster Sound and into Hudson Bay. Eye on the Arctic 

Institute of North, UAF, Team up on Arctic Policy. A new alliance between the University of Alaska Fairbanks and the Anchorage-based Institute of the North will create a unified forum for addressing arctic policy, infrastructure and climate change issues, a press release from UAF said.  A recently signed memorandum marks the first step in a long-term collaboration between the two organizations. As part of this partnership, the institute and university will organize several arctic-focused workshops and programs in the coming year. The Arctic Sounder 

Bid to Save Sandpiper at Risk of Extinction in Russia. Fewer than 200 pairs of spoon-billed sandpipers were thought to exist in 2009, and since then, the population has thought to have declined by a quarter each year. So a specialist team of bird experts are flying to the sandpiper's home in northeast Russia to collect and incubate eggs and set up a captive breeding population. BBC News

Tribal Energy Development at the Federal Level, July 14-15, 2011. Law Seminars International will host a seminar for attorneys, tribes, industry executives, and government officials to discuss energy development on tribal lands.