The Polar Retrospective looks at recent stories from around the world’s polar regions. This week we take a look at an Alaskan senator facing warming state and icy situation in Washington, at the 47th Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings, and the impact of leopard seals’ diet.

The Polar Retrospective is a collaborative effort by the editorial team of polarjournal.net. Each writer chooses a topic they found interesting and important in the past week. The initials at the end of each section indicate the author. We hope you enjoy it.

Murkowski’s Lonely Stand: A Senator Torn Between Ice and Oil

In the icy, rigid political landscape of Washington, Senator Lisa Murkowski is an outlier. But as she hails from and represents the only US Arctic state, Alaska, an icy atmosphere is nothing new to her. And her willingness to stand alone, often in direct opposition to President Donald Trump and the prevailing GOP consensus, has defined her recent career. But this isolation is not born from simple contrarianism; it is forged in the fundamental conflict of the state she represents—a state caught between the undeniable realities of a rapidly melting Arctic and an economy deeply rooted in fossil fuels.

Murkowski governs for a constituency that witnesses climate change firsthand. Alaskans see thawing permafrost buckle their roads, coastal erosion threaten their villages, and changing sea ice patterns disrupt millennia-old subsistence lifestyles. This is the stark, unavoidable truth of the modern Arctic. For Senator Murkowski, this means fighting for federal investment in climate-resilient infrastructure and acknowledging the profound environmental shifts at America’s northern frontier. Her critiques of “slapdash” federal policy are those of a leader who knows the immense cost of ignoring these slow-motion emergencies.

Simultaneously, Alaska’s lifeblood is economic development, primarily oil and gas extraction. The state’s budget and its jobs are inextricably linked to the very industry often cited as a driver of the changes her constituents are experiencing. When Senator Murkowski advocates for energy priorities, she is walking a tightrope—championing her state’s economic engine while navigating the geopolitical and environmental consequences of a warming planet. This dual reality leaves little room for the simple ideological stances demanded in national politics.

This is the source of her lonely watch. Senator Murkowski’s refusal to fall in line with a party platform that often overlooks these complex local tensions is a political necessity. When she breaks with her colleagues on key nominations or criticizes the party’s direction, she is reflecting the difficult, often contradictory, position of Alaska itself. Her political “discomfort,” as she calls it in an article by the Washington Post, is the embodiment of a state grappling with its identity in an era of monumental change—forced to depend on the resources of its past while confronting the uncertain climate of its future. M.W.

Human activity in Antarctica: issues debated in Milan

Since last Monday, the Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings (ATCM) have been taking place in Milan. Delegations from the 29 consultative parties and 29 observer countries are in Italy to deliberate – where only consensus prevails. NGOs and private sector representatives are also following the discussions. The first meetings were held in Canberra, Australia, in 1961. They have taken place annually since 1994, following the alphabetical order of the consultative parties. In 2024, India hosted the ATCM.

The rejection of the proposal to list the emperor penguin under Annex A-II (Specially Protected Species) of the Madrid Protocol (1991) was a major disappointment. Since fur seals were removed from that list in 2006, only the Ross seal remains. The latest publication from the British Antarctic Survey has reignited the debate this year, showing that the decline of the emperor penguin is even more dramatic than previously thought.

While classification is important to countries such as France, Germany, and Australia, this topic is only a small part of the ATCM agenda. Let us not forget that last year, the Russians reported the disappearance of one of their mechanics, desoriented by a katabatic wind at Mirny Station. Logistics teams are concerned about the outbreak of avian flu that has been affecting wildlife around the continent for nearly two years.

Equity, diversity, and inclusion are key themes in recruitment for scientific stations, as is the reduction of science’s environmental footprint in Antarctica. On that front, much anticipation surrounds the proposed regulation of tourism activity. The IAATO operators’ association is proactive in this regard and continues to pursue a policy of self-regulation. NGOs, for their part, advocate for a time-based, site-specific approach to visits in Antarctica and welcomed last year, in India, the fact that the parties were taking up the issue.

The discussions are rich, but too far from the media’s ears, as noted in the Daily Maverick. Indeed, initially confidential, they are made public only several months after the debates. In Milan, however, the broadcasting of the opening session is still a case to follow, and given the furnishings provided to some observers, one might wonder about the Meloni government’s actual commitment to the future of Antarctica. C.L.

Leopard Seals: Generalists in Appearance, Specialists in Action

Long viewed as generalist predators, leopard seals are now revealing a very different profile. A study led by researchers from Baylor University and the University of Rhode Island, in collaboration with the Georgia Aquarium, shows that these formidable Antarctic hunters are in fact individual specialists.

Published on June 23 in the journal Ecology and Evolution, the research is based on isotopic analysis of 46 whiskers taken from 34 leopard seals in the western Antarctic Peninsula. These vibrissae, true biological archives, retain the chemical signatures of prey consumed over time. The scientists were thus able to reconstruct ten years of dietary habits. Their findings: nearly 60% of the individuals studied consistently focused on a specific type of prey, sometimes for several years.

This level of individual specialization is remarkable, the researchers say, as it means just a few individuals can significantly impact local prey populations. At Cape Shirreff, for example, around twenty leopard seals are thought to have contributed to the collapse of the local Antarctic fur seal population, preying on as many as 70% of pups.

Larger females tend to hunt penguins and fur seal pups, while males more often feed on krill or squid indicating that both sex and body size influence dietary specialization. Some seals shift strategies from year to year, adapting their diets to changing environmental conditions.

In a context of accelerating climate change, these findings call for a reassessment of ecosystem management models to better understand the role of apex predators in shaping marine balance. M.B.