Snowmobile Battle Heats Up
A federal judge threatened Tuesday to hold National Park Service officials in contempt for violating his orders and deciding last week to allow more snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said he found it “mystifying” that the National Park Service on Wednesday decided to allow 780 snowmobiles per day in Yellowstone after he had ordered last year that no more than 493 be allowed each day this winter.
“It’s just a nonchalant attitude of the government to a federal judge’s order,” the judge said. He set a March 9 hearing on a possible contempt finding.
The National Park Service increased the number of snowmobiles allowed in Yellowstone after another federal judge, Clarence Brimmer in Wyoming, ordered officials Feb. 10 to end a Clinton administration plan that bans individual snowmobiles entirely beginning next winter.
Brimmer, ruling in a suit brought by snowmobile groups against the government, also told the National Park Service to write temporary rules for the last few weeks of this winter season, which ends in mid-March.
Sullivan, ruling in December in a suit brought by environmental groups, upheld the Clinton plan and its 493-snowmobile ceiling this year.
Andrew Emrich, a Justice Department attorney, denied that the Park Service had taken a nonchalant attitude.
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