Snowmobile limits set for Yellowstone

The National Park Service will allow as many as 540 snowmobiles a day to enter Yellowstone National Park -- a compromise that leaves neither environmentalists nor winter recreation advocates happy.

The proposed cap is less than the current limit of 720 but nearly twice the number that have been entering the park in the last four years, and would reverse a trend of cleaner air and less noise, environmentalists and former park employees said.

The decision, issued in Denver, will require snowmobiles to use “best available technology” to control emissions and noise, and for access to be “commercially guided.”

Snowmobile advocates, who had hoped for even greater access, welcomed the decision Tuesday, with reservations.

“We are not completely satisfied by the reduced levels of snowmobile access available only through commercial tour operators,” said Jack Welch, president of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a group that has pushed for increased access to public lands. “We have some concerns but note the news is not all bad.”

The new limits will take effect in the winter of 2008-09. Though the number of snowmobiles allowed in the park is smaller than the current cap, opponents wanted the vehicles eliminated from the park.

They said the machines caused air and noise pollution, adding that air quality improved dramatically when snowmobile use was at much lower levels.

The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees called the new limit “a shocking stewardship decision” that “would increase snowmobile exhaust, noise problems and traffic-related disturbance of wildlife far beyond the levels scientists monitored in Yellowstone during the past four winters when an average of 250 snowmobiles entered the park each day.”

Park officials said the decision was right for Yellowstone.

“This decision is fully supported by the science,” park service Regional Director Mike Snyder said. “I feel strongly that it’s going to protect resources, and I feel strongly that it’s going to do a really good job both serving visitors and access to Yellowstone.”

Previous analyses by the park service painted a glum picture of the effect of snowmobiles, concluding that they resulted in unhealthful air, among other things. The park service considered options including banning snowmobiles in favor of snow coaches (multipassenger vans mounted on treads) and setting a daily limit, its preferred alternative.

Bill Wade of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees said Tuesday’s decision ignored science and was not good for the park or the park system.

“It circumvents the conservation emphasis that has guided management of the national parks since the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916,” Wade said.

Politicians weighed in on both sides, and 86 members of Congress -- none from the states surrounding Yellowstone -- asked the National Park Service to phase out snowmobiles. But many local businesses argued in favor of the machines, saying they relied on the income from the snowmobile riders.

Yellowstone had as many as 1,400 snowmobiles daily during the 1990s, when louder, more polluting engines were the norm.