BRODIE FARQUHAR Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Friday, February 21, 2003 12:00 am
National Park Service (NPS) officials are inclined to allow a limited number of cleaner, quieter snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, according to a Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (FSEIS) released Thursday. The action would reverse a Clinton administration decision to phase snowmobiles out of the parks.
NPS officials said there will not be a public comment period on the FSEIS, and that a final decision won't be made until March 24, when Karen Wade, regional director of the Intermountain Region of the National Park Service, signs a formal record of decision.
Retired leaders of the National Park Service blasted the reversal. They contend that a total replacement of snowmobiles with snowcoaches remains the best and most scientifically sound way to protect park resources and employees. Yellowstone and Grand Teton officials countered that their new plan is an acceptable compromise between a total ban and no limits at all on snowmobile activity in the park system.
"It is wrong for the park," said Roger Kennedy, director of the National Park Service from 1993-97.
"The administration's push to keep snowmobiles in Yellowstone isn't faring too well," said Jon Catton of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition . "The administration is trying to walk away from its own science."
All the new plan will do, said Catton, is generate twice the carbon monoxide and six times the nitrogen oxide as the Clinton ban, continue health risks for employees and visitors with sensitive respiratory systems, create haze around Old Faithful, allow continued harassment of wildlife, and expand areas subject to snowmobile noise.
Steve Iobst, of Grand Teton National Park and leader of the winter use planning team, said changes from the Clinton-era plan were based on additional and better information on economic impacts and snowmobile technology. Yet the NPS's own scientific analysis of air quality, sound emissions, wildlife and human health, and safety indicate that a strict ban on snowmobiles would provide the greatest protection. Iobst acknowledged that in essence, the preferred alternative amounts to a multi-year experiment in which management hypotheses about how to manage snowmobiles can be tested through extensive monitoring and adaptive management.
"We were looking for balance," said John Sacklin, Yellowstone's chief planner, between the environmental considerations and all other considerations - especially the realization that cleaner, quieter snowmobiles are now available.
Essential elements of the preferred alternative include use of the best available technology for cleaner, quieter snowmobiles; a reduction in numbers of snowmobiles while maintaining historic visitor use numbers; an adaptive management program; guided snowmobile use; a phase-in period; and effective funding to manage the winter use program.
"The Park Service decision to phase out snowmobiles was founded on law, based on a decade of scientific study, and strongly supported by the public," said Denis Galvin, who formerly served as deputy director and acting director of the National Park Service. "Replacing snowmobiles with snowcoaches preserved public access while improving air quality and wildlife management. It restored some measure of natural quiet. That decision continues to be favored by the public. To abandon it, and condone an increase in snowmobile use, is simply irrational. As a nation, we owe more to Yellowstone."
Ed Klim, director of the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, said he was slowly plowing through the massive FSEIS, noting "the devil's in the details." His organization sued the federal government in late 2000, asking that the Clinton snowmobile ban be set aside on the basis that the National Park Service had not adequately considered the development of cleaner, quieter snowmobiles.
If the final document is essentially unchanged from a draft document released in November, Klim said the final plan is "a reasonable proposal that includes adaptive management for changes down the road."
U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., also termed the new plan "a reasonable compromise" that uses monitoring and better technology to maintain access for snowmobiles, while protecting the environment.
In addition to opposition from environmental groups, a delegation of U.S. House members has urged the Bush administration to protect Yellowstone National Park by phasing out snowmobiles. U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., U.S. Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J. and U.S. Rep. Joe Hoeffel, D-Pa., visited the park over the President's Day weekend to learn firsthand about issues surrounding snowmobile use in the park.
"There's a reason that park rangers wear gas masks at the west entrance of Yellowstone. It's because they're subjected to a chemical assault," said Holt. "I'd seen photographs of snowmobiles lined up toward West Yellowstone with a blue haze in the air, but nothing prepared me for what I saw, smelled, heard and tasted when I was actually there."
The representatives will take their concerns to their colleagues in Congress by introducing legislation that would ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone.