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(SALT LAKE CITY, Utah) — Concerned the National Park Service
is ignoring millions of Americans who want to restore winter quiet
to Yellowstone National Park, the nation's sole recreation group
devoted to protecting the rights of 18 million cross-country skiers
and snowshoers is launching a campaign to help these backcountry
snow enthusiasts penetrate the politics that is drowning out the
Yellowstone snowmobile debate.
Winter Wildlands Alliance's Boise-based staff members are meeting
with outdoor recreation leaders at the Outdoor Retailer show in
Salt Lake City this week to discuss Yellowstone and other key issues
facing the winter recreation industry and millions of snowsports
enthusiasts. As the newest member in the environmental and recreation
coalition targeting the National Park Service's handling of the
snowmobile issue at Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks,
Winter Wildlands is emphasizing the impacts snowmobiles are having
on skiers and other human users of the parks.
Winter Wildlands supporters across the nation say they're convinced
the Park Service is ignoring a decade of science and a mountain
of public comment and is preparing to turn its back on the human-powered
users of the parks. As more winter users vow never to return to
Yellowstone to dodge snowmobiles and have their backcountry experiences
ruined, Winter Wildlands is launching a national campaign to let
skiers, snowshoers, and others tell Congress and the Bush administration
in their own words they oppose snowmobiles in the two parks.
The Winter Wildlands campaign comes as the Park Service recently
delayed release of its final decision on Yellowstone until next
year, auspiciously to give the agency more time to more carefully
review the tens of thousands of public comments it already had when
it said in June it would probably let the snowmobiles remain.
"We are pleased the Park Service is taking extra time to review
the 350,000 comments received, especially considering 75 percent
of the comments favored a complete phase-out of snowmobiles from
the parks," said Winter Wildlands Executive Director Sally
Grimes. "We are puzzled, however, that before reviewing all
the comments, Park Service officials announced their preliminary
decision to continue to allow snowmobiles into the park.
"What was this decision based on?" Grimes asked. "It
ignores the vast majority of comments, 10 years of research by its
own top scientists and park managers, and the existing policies
and laws that protect places like Yellowstone. We have to assume
this preliminary decision was based on pressure from outside sources
such as the snowmobile industry, since nothing about it made sense."
Grimes said Winter Wildlands continues to accumulate comments from
frequent Yellowstone users and those who have never been to the
park in the winter, expressing outrage that the snowmobile decision
appears to be a "done deal" and vowing they won't return
to share Yellowstone with the snowmobiles.
"There are 18 million skiers and snowshoes in the country,
and those 65,000 snowmobiles in the park are keeping the rest of
us out," Grimes said. Rather than wait for a Park Service decision
that may have already been made, Winter Wildlands plans to use the
extra time before the final decision is issued to show snowmobile
access is contrary to public opinion and a clear violation of the
Park Service's own policies and regulations.
Congress and the national media will be hearing from people like Larry Hyde of Reno, Nev., who at 75 loves to explore the backcountry winter as much as ever:
"I spent a week, mostly on skis, in the Lamar Valley in Yellowstone in late January some five years ago, and it was one of the highlights in my lifetime," Hyde wrote. "I hike, ski and kayak as often as I can in the Sierra Nevada mountains, and only rarely can I go to another area such as Yellowstone. My deeply felt need is to get into nature, to see and hear the wildlife, and to get away from engines of all kinds. I want so much to have my grandchildren, all of whom love the backcountry, and, eventually their children, to have the chance to get away in our National Parks and our wilderness and to enjoy them as I have. Snowmobiles, even if their terrible noise level and air pollution level is reduced, destroy the backcountry experience and terrify the wildlife. They are simply incompatible with the wilderness and its wildlife and should be kept out."
Grimes said the Yellowstone snowmobile issue embodies many of the
user conflicts and public-lands management policies that Winter
Wildlands and its grassroots groups are involved in at the local
level in states across the American "snow belt." The most
recent example came last week at Lake Tahoe, where the Reno-based
Coalition for Safe and Appropriate Winter Sports, a member of WWA,
secured a U.S. Forest Service order setting aside the majority of
the Tahoe Meadows recreation area for human-powered winter sports.
Founded in 2000 by grassroots groups throughout the country, Winter Wildlands Alliance is the only national organization working to protect a quality human-powered winter recreation experience. For more information, visit www.winterwildlands.org.
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