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Help Keep Snowmobiles Out of Yellowstone
The Park Service has published a proposed rule on snowmobile use within Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Despite overwhelming public opposition to continued snowmobile use, the Park Service has announced it will increase the number of snowmobiles allowed within America's first national park.
Please help us raise the visibility of this outlandish action by sending your comments to the Park Service today and asking your friends and family to take action, too.
Be sure to add a sentence or two in your own words to describe what you think about this rule, or click on Tell Me More for issues to add to our letter. And thanks for helping!
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| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Keep Snowmobiles Out of Yellowstone
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks should be protected so their beauty remains undiminished for today's Americans and for future generations.
The National Park Service's original decision, made after years of conclusive study and public participation, provides the necessary protection for these two National Parks. That decision would phase out noisy, polluting, disruptive snowmobiles and replace them with multi-passenger snowcoaches that can provide ample access to both parks.
As you know, the National Park Service recently completed its own two-year supplemental study of this matter and spent $2.5 million doing it. The study determined that replacing snowmobiles with snowcoaches is the best alternative for Yellowstone's future. And that study further demonstrates that your plan will:
* Result in twice as much carbon monoxide as snowcoaches;
* Create haze at Old Faithful;
* Present a continuing risk to visitors and employees, especially those who suffer from asthma and other respiratory conditions;
* Generate engine noise across many of the park's most visited attractions; and,
* Cause more stress and harm to Yellowstone's wildlife.
Taxpayers themselves will bear a dollar cost for this as well as an environmental one: the Park Service acknowledges that the continued use of snowmobiles will cost us $1.3 million more each year than the shift to snowcoaches.
In the National Park Service Organic Act, the Congress directs you to:
"conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."
Your plan fails to meet that standard. Indeed, your plan will harm the world's first national park and diminish the experience of those who come to enjoy it.
It is time to implement the original National Park Service plan to protect Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, as well as those who visit and work there.
We are greatly indebted to those who had the insight and determination to create Yellowstone and other National Parks. We should honor their vision and resolve by adhering to the original Park Service decision. The law, science and overwhelming public opinion support that decision. Most basically, though, it is simply the right thing to do.
Sincerely,
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