February 13, 2002

Parks' Snowmobile Ban May Be Loosened or Delayed

By SEAN GILL, TIMES STAFF WRITER


WASHINGTON -- A ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park set to go into effect next winter could be delayed or altered if federal officials adopt one of several options under review, but critics warned Tuesday that they would oppose any rollback of the restrictions.

None of the proposed options would allow unhindered use of snowmobiles. One option would permit their continued use with noise and pollution limits, a National Park Service official said, while another would keep the ban in place as approved but delay its implementation by a year.

The ban was imposed during the Clinton administration, but the Bush administration agreed to review it as part of the settlement of a lawsuit filed by the snowmobiling industry, outdoor enthusiasts and the state of Wyoming. All of those groups argued that the initial study did not take into consideration a new generation of cleaner, quieter snowmobiles that are friendlier to the environment. In addition to Yellowstone, the nation's oldest national park, the ban affects Grand Teton National Park. At a news conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill, proponents of the ban said the latest study was a waste of time and taxpayer money, and they urged the park service to maintain its current schedule of phasing out snowmobile use beginning next winter.

"The new review finds that continued snowmobile use will harm wildlife, just as the original report did," said William Meadows, president of the Wilderness Society. "It finds that continued use will harm air quality--just as the original report did."

Meadows was joined by Reps. Susan A. Davis (D-San Diego) and Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.), Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Steven Bosak, an official with the National Parks Conservation Assn. They said the alternative options were not supported by the study's findings.

Davis said even the most advanced snowmobiles harm the environment and detract from other visitors' enjoyment of Yellowstone and Grand Teton, places with unique ecology and geology that need to be protected.

"We're not saying people shouldn't snowmobile," Davis said. "But there are other places to do that."

But Ed Klim, president of the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Assn., said proponents were working from a draft several months old that did not represent the final report and did not include data that the industry and other agencies had presented.

Klim said snowmobiles use the same park roads in the winter as cars do during the summer, and that the industry would support options under consideration that would include increased limits, such as the number of snowmobiles allowed.

"We have never been for unfettered snowmobiling in Yellowstone," he said. "There is a bit of misunderstanding of our position."

Under the Clinton administration plan, snowmobiling would be phased out and access to the parks would be provided by snow coaches, essentially buses on skis managed by the park service, said parks spokeswoman Marsha Karle. A phaseout of snowmobiles would begin in winter 2002-03, with a full ban by the following winter.

The first option under the new study to be presented by park officials calls for no change to this plan. A second option would keep the same rules as the original plan but would delay its implementation until 2003-04, with a full ban in effect by winter 2004-05.

The third option would allow unguided snowmobiling in the parks as long as the snowmobiles met stricter emission standards and decibel levels than currently allowed. Under this option, the park service would increase law enforcement and educational programs to limit the effect of snowmobiles on the park's environment.

Under a fourth option, only guided snowmobile tours would be allowed and only if the tours use the most clean and quiet snowmobile models available. A limit would be placed on the number of snowmobiles in the parks.

The report, prepared by officials at the parks, is scheduled to be available for public comment by March 29.

Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times
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March 6, 2002

Snowmobilers Have Found an Ally in Bush

By BLAINE HARDEN, New York Times
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, March 1 — Ted Chlarson, a cattle trucker from Utah, knows precisely what park rangers and environmentalists think of him and his snowmobile.

"They hate us!" he said one morning this week, shouting to be heard in the winter rush hour at Yellowstone.

In brilliant sunshine and near-zero cold, he and more than 500 snowmobile riders — an ill-tuned traveling band in which everyone seemed to be playing chainsaw — were jouncing out to Old Faithful geyser. They had entered Yellowstone through the park's west gate, where two weeks ago rangers began wearing gas masks to prevent headache and nausea caused by snowmobile exhaust.

Dodging scores of winter-bedraggled bison as he traveled, Mr. Chlarson took in vistas of highland snow and thermal steam, of nesting trumpeter swans and of a bull elk sipping ice water from the Madison River.

"The environmentalists want to know how I can enjoy this beautiful scenery with all the noise," shouted Mr. Chlarson, 50, who has been riding snowmobiles with family and friends in Yellowstone for 22 winters. "Well, I may not hear it, but I can see it. I can be riding on this noisy thing and I got my solitude."

Thanks to President Bush, Mr. Chlarson's access to high-decibel solitude in America's oldest national park seems secure, at least for another winter or two and perhaps until a Democrat is elected president. After ordering a moratorium on President Bill Clinton's ban on snowmobiles in the park last year, the Bush administration announced last month that it was considering alternatives, backed by snowmobile manufacturers and dealers, that would allow the machines continued access to the park.

Snowmobiles in Yellowstone have become a high-blood-pressure wedge issue for Americans who use and care about the national park system. Shattering the winter silence, even as they delight more than 83,000 riders a year and pump tourist money into remote towns around the park, the machines have cut a deep and seemingly unbridgeable divide.

On one side of that divide — the side that appears to have won the ear of the White House — are those who insist that public land must be kept open to the public, even if the public is sometimes noisy and noisome. Snowmobile advocates accuse their adversaries of being environmental elitists who want the federal government to dictate how Americans recreate.

On the other side are those who contend that the highest duty of the park system is to protect unique and fragile natural resources for future generations. Snowmobile critics say the evidence is overwhelming that the machines cause air and noise pollution in the park, while putting pressure on wildlife and endangering the health of park rangers. They accuse their adversaries in the Bush administration of kowtowing to snowmobile makers, and they say they have the sympathy of most Americans. In the last year, polls have consistently shown that the public is concerned that Mr. Bush may favor business interests over protecting the environment.

In and around Yellowstone, as in communities across the country where snowmobiles generate handsome profits and nerve-shattering noise, battle lines have been drawn in the snow and lots of people are angry.

"Snowmobilers are like smokers," said Michael Finley, who, until he retired last July from the National Park Service, was superintendent of Yellowstone for nearly seven years. "They are not bad people, but they think they have a God-given right to engage in an activity that has adverse effects on human health and the environment. They are either in denial about the extent of their actions or they really don't care."

Mr. Finley spent much of his time at Yellowstone working on an assessment of the environmental impact of snowmobiles, which proliferated in the 1990's. The assessment lasted more than five years, involving four rounds of scientific and public comment. It concluded that snowmobiles should be banned from the park to limit noise, pollution and protect wildlife. It recommended wintertime public access to the park via snow coaches, a kind of bus on skis.

Mr. Finley says the Bush administration arbitrarily overturned the findings of that assessment.

"They decided they were going to have snowmobiles in Yellowstone no matter what the facts demonstrated," Mr. Finley said. "They never asked to review the facts. They had their minds made up. I watched an administration with a preconceived agenda unravel a thoughtful and scientifically based decision."

Snowmobiles at Yellowstone became a highly visible, highly partisan environmental issue when the Clinton administration approved the long-studied ban on the day before Mr. Bush was sworn in as president.

The next day, while rolling back a number of his predecessor's last- minute orders, Mr. Bush imposed a moratorium on the ban. The Departments of Interior and Justice then spent several months negotiating the settlement of a suit brought by snowmobile makers seeking ways to avoid the ban.

Results of that settlement were announced last month when the administration said it would ask for public comment on three alternatives — two of which would allow snowmobiles into the park, while limiting their number and requiring technology to limit noise and emissions. This will be the fifth time the public has been asked to comment. Most comment in the past has favored a ban, primarily because of noise and pollution. A decision is expected in the fall.

Here in Yellowstone, it is not just the snowmobile haters who are mad. Echoing the annoyance of dozens of snowmobile owners interviewed here this week, Mr. Chlarson said that park rangers in Yellowstone began wearing respirators last month as a public-relations gimmick to make snowmobile drivers look bad.

"To my way of thinking, the respirators are grandstanding on their part," said Mr. Chlarson, who owns six snowmobiles and drives from Honeyville, Utah, to Yellowstone every year for a week's vacation. "The air isn't that bad. If the rangers don't like it, they can get another job."

For their part, park rangers say they are feeling sick, quite literally, over snowmobiles.

"I feel lightheaded and need to lay down quietly somewhere," Bonnie Gafney, a park ranger who has yet to be fitted for a respirator, wrote in an illness report last week after two and half hours of working at the park's west entrance.

"Fumes were very heavy today," she wrote, they "seemed to hang in the air even when there were no snowmobiles around. The smells were very pronounced. I was inside the booths most of the time. I'm having trouble concentrating."

A 1999 Park Service study of air quality at the west entrance to Yellowstone found that "levels of individual pollutants, including carcinogens such as benzene, that results from the snowmobile exhaust can be high enough to be a threat to human health."

The report said employee exposure to exhaust gases should be minimized. It added that "visitors would likewise want to minimize their exposure to what are likely extremely unhealthy levels of air pollution."

The ranger in charge at the west entrance, Bob Seibert, said that the park service has been pumping fresh air into the gate booths where rangers have collected entrance fees for 10 years. But he said that increased complaints from his staff about headache, sore throat, feelings of lethargy and difficulty counting change had forced park managers in the last two years to begin buying and testing respirators.

"No one wants to do the respirator thing," Mr. Seibert said. "It is very hard to talk to visitors, for one thing."

Just outside the park entrance, in the town of West Yellowstone, Mont., which proudly calls itself the "snowmobile capital of the world," there is widespread resentment at the park rangers for being "antisnowmobile."

Ten shops rent snow machines in the town of 1,200. The profitability of the mushrooming hotel industry — with accommodations for 12,000 people — depends on crowds of snowmobilers.

The sense of relief and gratitude is palpable among business owners in West Yellowstone. They say the Bush administration is forcing the federal bureaucracy, despite naysaying in the park service, to pay attention to the rights of Americans to use public lands.

Environmental groups, meanwhile, suspect that the battle over snowmobiles has probably been lost, at least until the next presidential election.

"It does seem like it is a foregone conclusion," said Steve Bosak, who monitors motorized park access for the National Parks Conservation Association, an environmental advocacy group. "The Bush people are going to keep snowmobiles in the park, regardless of the way the rest of Americans feel about it."

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/06/national/06YELL.html