Snowmobile violations in Yellowstone National Park are up for the second winter in a row, despite heightened law enforcement and education efforts targeting bad behavior.

Records maintained by the National Park Service show that the just completed 2002-2003 snowmobile season generated 358 violations, compared to 338 the winter before and 161 in 2000-2001. The increased violations for this season occurred despite the special expenditure of $265,000 in the past four months on increased law enforcement, orientation and education of visitors.

All but a handful of the violations occurred between West Yellowstone and Old Faithful.

"It is difficult to say that this is a just a few bad apples when Yellowstone has had nearly 700 snowmobile violations over the past two years," said Charles Clusen, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council's national parks project. "Yellowstone's snowmobile problems are getting worse, not better."

Marsha Karle, a spokeswoman for Yellowstone, said more law enforcement rangers explained some of the jump in violations from 2000-'01 to the winter o f '01-'02, simply because it increased the odds that violators would be caught.

"It doesn't explain why we've had an increase of violations this season," she acknowledged, especially since poor snow conditions shortened the 2002-'03 season by 13 days, compared to the year before.

Beginning with the 2001-'02 season, the park has hired an additional four law enforcement rangers and two interpretive guides and educators. The rangers have been cracking down on snowmobilers entering restricted areas, careless driving, underage driving, speeding, drunk driving and wildlife harassment, while the interpretive guides have made numerous presentations about safe and responsible snowmobile behavior.

Some of the more egregious behavior ticketed by Yellowstone rangers this season included intoxicated snowmobilers racing through the park at night, with one machine driven into the Firehole River.

Another snowmobiler was cited for speeding 85 miles per hour in Fountain Flats, where the legal limit is 35 mph.

"Virtually all of these violations pose a danger to visitors and wildlife," said Sean Smith, a former Yellowstone ranger and now public lands director for Bluewater Network, a conservation group focused on the abuses of motorized recreation on public lands.

Karle said Yellowstone visitors were very uncertain in the 2001-'02 season about whether they'd be able to tour Yellowstone in the future, whether the Clinton administration ban on snowmobiles would happen or not. "We saw a lot of anger that year," she said, as snowmobilers became more aggressive about expressing their right to continue riding in Yellowstone.

The National Park Service had been planning to phase out snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks starting with a 50 percent reduction in December 2001 and a total ban beginning in December 2003.

This most recent season saw the Bush administration reverse the ban on snowmobiles, requiring cleaner and quieter machines, fewer numbers of snowmobiles and guided groups. "People don't like the idea of being forced to have guides," Karle said.

Cheryl Matthews, another spokeswoman for Yellowstone, said that off-road violations grew from 32 last year to 75 this season, in spite of more boundary signs posted and the purchase of high-performance snowmobiles to help rangers catch boundary violators.

Last year, rangers complained that there was more off-road touring than ever before, and the trend seems to be continuing. Matthews said a local pilot had flown over the park in January and shot photos showing large networks of snowmobile tracks where they didn't belong.

Clark Collins, executive director and founder of Blue Ribbon Coalition, a motorized recreation advocacy group, said people who get ticketed get no sympathy from him.

"We strongly support strict enforcement of the laws and regulations," Collins said. "We have no sympathy for violators." He said a few violators do not make a valid argument that all snowmobilers should be banned.

But that's what Steven Bosak of the National Parks Conservation Association would like to see.

"Hiring additional rangers to keep snowmobiles under control will take money away from other pressing needs in our national parks," he said. "Instead, the Bush administration should phase snowmobiles out of Yellowstone. The administration's own studies show this would best protect the park."

Jim Watson, of Kalispell, Mont., said he has cross-country skied in Yellowstone before and would be inclined to visit more often if there were fewer and quieter snowmobiles.

"You're always within earshot," he said, which tends to adversely impact the quality of the experience he seeks in Yellowstone's back country. "You can't even listen to the mudpots or the geysers," Watson said.