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Park Service Won't Act to Protect Yellowstone Despite Irrefutable Evidence
Urge Agency to Protect Our Park and Stop Wasting Our Money!
Three times the National Park Service has studied the impact of snowmobiles on the resources, visitors and employees of Yellowstone National Park. And three times, the verdict has been unmistakable: eliminating snowmobiles and replacing them with snowcoaches is the surest way to protect our oldest national park.
But the administration has capitulated to the snowmobile industry repeatedly. Now it’s launching yet another multi-million-dollar study in a cynical search for science it likes, even though the National Park System is starved of money already. Please tell the Park Service it is long past time to use the science it already has and to ban snowmobiles!
Photo below courtesy Jeff Henry.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Yellowstone Winter Use Scoping
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
I write to urge you move immediately toward replacement of all snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park with snowcoach access.
Your own three studies of winter use have repeatedly shown that allowing even limited snowmobile use in the park bears a high price for wildlife and other park resources, for visitors and for employees. Those costs are unnecessary and easily avoided.
The Environmental Protection Agency has embraced your studies' findings every time: the most environmentally friendly answer is to fully replace snowmobiles with snowcoach access. The past two winters have also proven that move an effective one. As visitors have opted for snowcoaches over individual snowmobiles, the park has begun to recover.
Five years of delay is unconscionable. Even worse is yet another study that seeks to justify continued snowmobile use in Yellowstone. Your agency has already spent well in excess of $7 million studying the problem. It is absurd to spend millions more when the scientifically sound solution is so obvious and well-documented.
I do not want mediocrity in Yellowstone National Park. Your regulations give you a duty to protect the park's air quality and natural soundscapes and to preserve or restore natural quiet and natural sounds.
Those duties are clear. The path to fulfilling them is equally clear: fully replace snowmobiles with snowcoaches for Yellowstone winter use. Please adopt that solution without further delay.
Sincerely,
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Campaign Launched:
July 29, 2005
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The administration has already spent over $7 million of our tax dollars to study the impacts of snowmobiles on Yellowstone’s wildlife, soil and water, health impacts for employees and visitors alike and on the experience of quiet recreationists. That science may be inconvenient for the administration, but it is NOT inconclusive.
Each time, the science said, the most environmentally friendly alternative for winter access to Yellowstone is to end snowmobile use and to fully replace it with snowcoaches. The Environmental Protection Agency has endorsed those findings each time. But five years into this process, snowmobiles remain in Yellowstone.
Change, But Too Little and Too Late
That’s not to say there’s been no change. Quiet is returning to Yellowstone and the air is clearer. But that is in spite of, not because of, any actions this administration has taken to protect the park. The changes come from the principled choices that many winter visitors to Yellowstone have made on their own.
Snowmobile use is declining because visitors are opting for snowcoaches instead of individual snowmobiles. In the past two winters, 60 percent fewer visitors have chosen snowmobiles, 42 percent more have elected to see the spectacular winter park in snowcoaches.
It Works as the Science Said it Would
The result is exactly what the National Park Service and the Environmental Protection Agency predicted. Clouds of exhaust have begun to lift from the park. In places where it has been nearly impossible to escape snowmobile noise since the early 1980s, peace and quiet are staging a comeback. That is not evidence that the battle is won, but it is evidence of the soundness of the three previous studies.
Our challenge is to put steady pressure on the National Park Service and this administration to complete the job that a caring public has already begun.
What Good Can We Do With More Comments? Much!
It is important to remember who the culprit is behind snowmobile damage to our oldest national park and it’s not the professionals of the National Park Service. That agency is full of dedicated people trying their best to protect our great natural places.
The more we support their efforts with our steady public demands for the kind of management our parks deserve, the better their chance of stemming the damage. They need us if they, and we, are to have any hope at all of protecting these priceless places.
The shift in Yellowstone’s visitor preferences for snowcoaches over individual snowmobile was not serendipity; it almost certainly owes to the publicity and the pressure you have helped us bring to bear on the problem. We need your help again to sustain that transformation.
How You Can Help: Take Action Today!
Yellowstone’s restoration is far from complete. According to the National Park Service, noise from even the reduced number of snowmobiles violates park standards designed to protect quiet and visitor enjoyment of natural sounds. Worse, the recovery there could be reversed if the administration finds (or creates) the pseudo-science it’s looking for to support continued snowmobile use.
Please write today to urge the National Park Service to immediately adopt the choice its three studies have shown to be best for the park: replacing snowmobiles with snow coaches! You can send that message quickly from the previous page. If you have time to write your own comments, we hope you will. Your own words, based on your own experiences, will be the most influential. We’ve provided contact information as well as a sample letter from which you can draw the major points.
Contact Information
Winter Use Scoping, Yellowstone National Park
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190
Web form: http://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?projectID=12047&documentId=11727
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