It’s so close you can almost taste, smell and hear the crystalline air,
gurgling geysers, and squeak of cold snow underfoot in a Yellowstone
National Park that is managed to further restore and permanently protect the
natural sights and sounds of winter. So close, but we’re not there yet. You
and I have a final opportunity to urge Yellowstone to adopt a permanent plan
for winter access that protects the Park and at the same time improves the
visitor experience. Please help us complete the transition to a healthier,
cleaner, and quieter Yellowstone by commenting right now.
Park officials recently released a Draft Winter Use Plan and Draft
Environmental Impact Statement including a “preferred alternative” that the
park proposes to adopt. The plan, once finalized, will take effect in
December, 2011 and will guide winter activities in Yellowstone for decades
to come. The Park Service is accepting public comment on the Draft Plan/DEIS
through July 18, 2011.
After 12 years of political wrangling, nearly a million public comments,
and, yes, a few discouraging setbacks, Yellowstone National Park is closer
than ever to being the winter sanctuary its founders envisioned when they
established Yellowstone as our first national park. Under an interim plan –
the direct result of legal action by Winter Wildlands Alliance and four
coalition partners – the park has made a profound comeback from its days of
being overwhelmed by the noise and exhaust of snowmobiles.
The draft
plan’s preferred alternative includes some good ideas that deserve praise.
Services for skiers, snowshoers, and other low-impact visitors are improved
and include a number of side roads set aside as ski and snowshoe routes.
This plan acknowledges, finally, the strong public demand for skiing,
snowshoeing and other quiet experiences in Yellowstone’s winter season.
However, the preferred alternative authorizes numbers of snowmobiles on
peak days that are higher than either the interim plan or the average of the
past five years, the number above which the park’s own scientists note will
undercut Yellowstone’s resurgent conditions and adversely impact wildlife,
natural soundscapes and air quality.
Please take a moment right now
to tell Yellowstone’s new superintendent that you want Yellowstone’s winter
recovery to continue. That you don’t want the park to slide back to levels
of snowmobile traffic that disturbed wildlife, made noise a constant
unpleasant companion and diminished the experience of visiting Yellowstone
to a degree that led many folks – including you? - to regard the first
national park in the world as a place to mostly avoid in winter.
Please ensure a better future for Yellowstone by
submitting comments today.
Deadline for comments is
July 18, 2011.
HOW TO COMMENT:
Click on the following link, which will take you to the NPS comment webpage:
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?parkID=111&projectID=29281&documentID=40801
You may also comment by mail to:
Yellowstone National Park
Winter Use DEIS
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone NP, WY 82190.
Comments will not be accepted by fax, email, or in any other way than those
specified above.
Click here for a sample
letter and talking points. Please cut and
paste the points you believe are most important into your letter on the web
comment page and be sure to add any relevant personal experience in the
park.
Superintendent Dan Wenk
Yellowstone National Park
Winter Use DEIS
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming 82190
Dear Superintendent Wenk:
As a Nordic skier [or snowshoer, winter
hiker, etc.] who values the natural sights and sounds of Yellowstone in
winter, I appreciate the improvements to Yellowstone’s winter environment
resulting from reduced motorized traffic and the requirements for cleaner,
quieter machines and for commercial guiding of all snowmobiles. I also
appreciate your renewed emphasis on providing better services for skiers,
snowshoers and other low-impact winter visitors.
Your Draft Winter
Use Plan’s acknowledgement that visitors highly value quiet in Yellowstone
and your preferred alternative’s proposal to designate certain side roads as
ski and snowshoe routes and to limit motorized travel on the east side of
the park in March are positive steps.
However, these positive steps
are overshadowed by your proposal to allow snowmobile numbers during peak
times that are significantly higher than past seasons and higher than your
own scientists recommend for protecting park resources and ensuring visitor
enjoyment. Your soundscapes experts have verified during recent seasons that
when snowmobile numbers declined below 200 per day that visitors’
opportunities to hear sounds like the hiss and splash of erupting geysers at
Old Faithful are significantly improved. Furthermore, your biologists have
cautioned that if vehicle numbers are allowed to increase from their recent,
reduced levels, adverse impacts to winter-stressed wildlife may increase and
cause “fitness effects,” reducing animals’ health and the strength they
require to survive Yellowstone’s winters.
Your Environmental Impact
Statement states that visitors who prefer and expect quiet in Yellowstone
National Park will have the opportunity to consult a schedule in future
winters to learn which days will have less vehicle traffic and thus less
noise and plan their visit for those days. Your suggestion that I check
ahead to learn if I will have opportunities to experience winter quiet and
natural sounds is, in reality, an acknowledgement that 330 snowmobiles a day
during peak periods – an increase of more than 50 percent from recent
seasons – is simply too many vehicles in the park. Please don’t contradict
your scientific findings and forsake stewardship of the park in order to
provide a recreational snowmobiling experience that exceeds current demand.
In addition, please do not modify your requirement that all recreational
snowmobilers be accompanied by a commercial guide. You have stated in the
Federal Register that the 100 percent commercial guiding requirement has
been a “fundamental element” of mitigating unsafe and illegal snowmobile
use, which prior to the guiding requirement included speeding, driving off
roads, endangering other visitors and disturbing wildlife. Your analyses of
winter use have stated that because commercial guiding clusters snowmobiles
in larger groups, it has helped provide noise-free intervals. You have also
noted commercial guiding has helped snowmobile visitors understand and
appreciate the park. In short, please do not contradict your own findings.
I urge you to adopt a long-term winter use plan that caps over-snow
vehicle numbers at or below those experienced during the past five winter
seasons, numbers at which Yellowstone is on a path to again become America’s
most beloved winter sanctuary. Above all, please give Yellowstone a
sustainable winter transportation system befitting of the world’s first
national park, one that minimizes impacts while accommodating enjoyment of
Yellowstone’s unparalleled winter environment.
Sincerely,
Name
Address
Background and Additional
Talking Points: (back to top)
With your help, we've made enormous progress in providing the best possible
protection for Yellowstone over the past decade. We’ve eliminated the
noisiest and most-polluting forms of winter access and moderated the
disruption to wintering wildlife. The park has indeed become healthier as
snowmobile numbers have been reduced and visitors have turned increasingly
to entering the park under their own power or on more
environmentally-friendly snowcoaches. We have a final opportunity to bring
permanence to these improved conditions.
The National Park Service
has prepared a Draft Winter Use Plan and Draft Environmental Impact
Statement for Yellowstone National Park. The purpose of the Winter Use Plan
is to establish a management framework for Yellowstone’s unique and valuable
winter recreational resources. The plan will take effect in December, 2011,
when the present two-year interim plan expires.
You can view the
draft plan and proposed alternatives at
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/YELL
The Plan’s “Preferred Alternative” proposes a variable use
level of over-snow vehicle numbers allowed during the season. This
includes up to 330 snowmobiles for half the winter, or about 45 days, up to
220 snowmobiles for a third of the season, or about 30 days and between 110
and 143 snowmobiles per day for a sixth of the season, or about 15 days.
Snowcoach numbers would vary correspondingly, ranging from up to 80
snowcoaches during peak periods to 30 snowcoaches per day during low
periods.
For the past two winter seasons Yellowstone National
Park has operated under an interim plan that allowed 318 snowmobiles and 78
snowcoaches per day to enter the park. The interim plan includes
“Best Available Technology” and 100 percent commercial guiding requirements
for all snowmobiles. Actual use under the interim plan has been 194
snowmobiles and 40 snowcoaches per day. The average number of snowmobiles
for the past five seasons has been approximately 250 per day. During this
period of reduced over-snow vehicle traffic Yellowstone’s unique winter
ecosystem has experienced a profound resurgence.
Yellowstone’s new superintendent, Dan Wenk, has said it is very likely the
final plan will change from the “preferred alternative” before a decision is
made later this year. Your comments can help motivate the
superintendent to improve upon the preferred alternative by further reducing
vehicle traffic; increasing services for skiers, snowshoers and other
low-impact visitors; and better protecting Yellowstone’s wildlife and unique
natural resources. Following are some points you may want to consider in
your comments.
Non-motorized use: The park’s preferred
alternative proposes to set aside certain side roads as ski and snowshoe
routes. This could include Firehole Canyon Drive, North Canyon Rim
Drive, Riverside Drive, Fountain Flat Road, Firehole Lake Drive, Grand Loop
Road from Canyon Junction to the Washburn Hot Springs Overlook, and Virginia
Cascades. In addition, the preferred alternative proposes that when
Yellowstone’s winter season begins winding down in March, motorized traffic
going northbound on the east side of the park would end at West Thumb, and
coming south on the east side it would end at Canyon. This would keep most
of Yellowstone’s east side free of motorized vehicles from March 2 to March
15. This is a positive step for quiet, non-motorized enjoyment of
Yellowstone and something you may want to affirm to the park’s managers.
Motorized use: The National Park Service is proposing a
patchwork of four different traffic levels across Yellowstone’s winter
season.
Daily snowmobile numbers would range from 110 to 330. Daily
snowcoach numbers would range from 30 to 80. Park officials say the
variable traffic levels would provide a mix of visitor experiences with days
that would be noisier and days that would be quieter.
In
reality, however, on most of the season’s 91 days the preferred alternative
would allow a larger number of snowmobiles than visitors have experienced in
recent winters when reduced snowmobiling brought easing of noise and less
disturbance of wildlife. The proposal to allow daily snowmobile
numbers to increase fails to act on scientific findings from those seasons
and on the National Park Service’s policies, which require the NPS to
“preserve, to the greatest extent possible, the natural soundscapes of the
parks.”
The National Park Service’s soundscapes experts
measured the effects on listening conditions at Old Faithful in recent
seasons as the popularity of multi-passenger snowcoaches has
increased and fewer visitors overall have opted to enter the park on
snowmobiles. When the number of snowmobiles declined below 200 per day,
scientists measured a significant improvement in visitors’ opportunities to
hear sounds that define the Old Faithful area such as the hiss and splash of
erupting geysers. Yet the National Park Service is proposing to allow up to
330 snowmobiles a day—an increase of over 50 percent from recent seasons—and
discloses in its environmental impact statement that noise loud enough to
interfere with good listening conditions in Yellowstone would increase
compared to the “current condition.”
The National Park
Service also acknowledges in its environmental impact statement that its
preferred alternative would have a greater adverse impact on wildlife than
an alternative that would cap over-snow vehicle numbers at or below the
level of the past five seasons. The study reflects that with
greater numbers of vehicles, impacts would be greater both to individual elk
and bison and to local populations of both species, and that impacts to
trumpeter swans and bald eagles could “heighten the probability of adverse
impacts on the reproductive success of both species.”
Winter
Wildlands Alliance and our coalition partners are concerned that although
the preferred alternative includes some positive elements, overall it
represents a failure to provide the best available protection of
Yellowstone. As such, it represents a de-prioritization of
stewardship in the world’s first national park because it chooses to permit
greater wildlife disturbance and noise pollution in order to provide a
recreational snowmobile experience that exceeds current demand. Yellowstone
can, and must, do better.
Nearly eleven years ago, the National Park
Service in 2000 adopted a Record of Decision to phase out the use of
snowmobiles within Yellowstone National Park by the winter of 2003-2004.
Based on sound science and in accordance with National Park Service legal
mandates and policies, that decision was overturned by the Bush
Administration in 2001. Since that reversal, the public has responded to the
winter use debate in Yellowstone in unprecedented numbers. Over 900,000
Americans have submitted comments to the National Park Service. Over 80
percent have urged Yellowstone to end snowmobile use and adopt the “least
impacting” means of visiting the Park’s interior in winter—the originally
envisioned transition to snowcoach access that subsequent studies verified
would best protect park resources. Much of the public comment focused
specifically on the critical importance of applying science and upholding
the National Park Service’s stewardship responsibility to emphasize
conservation over use whenever the two are in conflict.
Former
Directors of the National Park Service have come together to emphasize in
joint letters to the Department of Interior that weakening protection of
Yellowstone by authorizing continued snowmobile use within the Park “would
be a radical departure from the Department’s stewardship mission.” They
cautioned: “The choice over snowmobile use in Yellowstone is a choice
between upholding the founding principle of our national parks—stewardship
on behalf of all visitors and future generations—or catering to a special
interest in a manner that would damage Yellowstone’s resources and threaten
public health. The latter choice would set an entirely new course for
America’s national parks.” National Park Service Directors from the last
eight presidential administrations specifically pointed out: “…reducing
snowmobile numbers still further—from 250 per day to zero—while expanding
public access on modern snowcoaches, would further improve the park’s
health.”
Talking Points
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