In Yellowstone National Park, clouds of blue exhaust used to hang in the air as the drone of snowmobiles filled valley. The pollution was so bad that park employees wore gas masks to work, wildlife suffered, and some guests there to enjoy the quiet of the park complained about their experience. The National Park Service tried to improve the situation, in part, by implementing a temporary rule to limit the number of snowmobiles allowed inside the gates each day. Now, the agency has proposed a plan that would make the temporary rule permanent.

“[The proposal is] a strong document with the best monitoring data and analysis that we’ve ever been able to bring to bear to this issue,” says Al Nash, a Park Service spokesperson.

Not surprisingly, the proposal is fueling a controversy between snowmobile outfitters, conservation groups, and even within the agency itself. Just last week, seven of the eight living former National Park Service directors wrote a letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, who oversees the Park Service, expressing their concern over the proposed plan (the eighth former director left the position within the last year and therefore cannot comment on the controversy according to ethics rules).

For the past three years, the temporary rule has capped the number of snowmobiles in the park at 720. The preferred alternative in the environmental impact statement is to keep the limit at that level, even though, on average, 250 snowmobiles enter the park each day.

“Certainly it is puzzling that the recommendation itself is so far above the current average daily use,” says Tony Jewett, the senior director for the Northern Rockies region of the National Parks Conservation Association. “It is so inappropriate to maintain a level of snowmobile use that the Park Service, in its own monitoring, has seen has negative impacts on air quality, noise, wildlife, and other visitors’ experience.”

But some adventure companies that offer snowmobile trips into the park say even if the proposal goes through, there’s room for more. “Seven hundred and twenty snowmobiles over 100,000 square miles is pretty miniscule,” says Brad Schmier of Yellowstone Adventures. He says that the conflict is being driven by people who are unfamiliar with the area. “It’s kind of like me making a comment on and making decisions about what’s going on in the Everglades,” he says.

The National Parks Conservation Association suggests phasing out snowmobiles in Yellowstone, which was the plan under the Clinton Administration. A federal court overturned the proposed ban in 2004. Better snowmobile technology—such as moving from two-stroke to four-stroke engines— has made the machines quieter and less polluting, which means that more of them can be allowed into the park without harming wildlife and filling the air with smog, says Nash.

But critics maintain that even with better technology, snowmobiles will still disrupt the environment. “There’s no question that recent improvements in technology, four-stroke engines, and the institution of mandatory guiding of snowmobilers, has made for a better environment than the previous one, which was frankly out of control and chaotic,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean that it will not have a negative impact on those resources. It’s just a question of degree.”

The National Park Service is accepting public comments on its plan until May 31st. Nash says that the final decision, which he expects to be made by the fall, could be different than the agency’s preferred plan.

In the meantime, Jewett remains skeptical that the politics surrounding the Parks Service won’t interfere with the final decision: “On this issue, it has not been NPCA’s experience that the park service has been responsive to the public sentiment nor responsive to the scientific documentation of impact.”

Posted on Apr 6, 2007 at 5:00 PM
Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)