Posted on 12/16/2003 6:02:58 PM PST by Libloather
Bush's Yellowstone Snowmobile Plan Stalls
28 minutes ago
By JACK SULLIVAN, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The National Park Service must revive a plan, scrapped by the Bush administration, to ban snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, a federal judge ordered Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said the Bush administration should not have set aside a Clinton administration plan that would have banned snowmobiles in favor of mass-transit snow coaches, which would reduce pollution in the parks.
The administration dropped that plan and decided to instead allow limited snowmobiling to continue under rules that only allowed snowmobiles with quieter and less-polluting engines.
The Park Service was set to start operating under the Bush rules Wednesday. Sullivan's ruling does not entirely close the parks to snowmobiling.
Instead, he ordered the Park Service to follow the older rules, which will eventually allow only snow coaches — which carry groups of winter visitors — in areas where individual snowmobilers once rode.
A limited number of snowmobilers will be allowed to enter this winter — about 490 per day in Yellowstone and 50 per day in Grand Teton.
The Bush administration plan would have allowed 950 snowmobilers per day in Yellowstone and 400 in Grand Teton, although most would have to ride the less environmentally harmful machines.
The Park Service called the administration plan a balance between its duty to protect the park and its responsibility to allow the public to visit and enjoy it.
In a lawsuit, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition of Bozeman, Mont., argued that the Park Service had ignored its own studies that show a ban on snowmobiles and the use of snow coaches would best protect the park's natural resources.
The group argued that unacceptable pollution and health risks to workers would have continued even with the new emission and entry limits on snowmobiles.
The Park Service had argued that the new plan is based on a generation of cleaner snowmobile engines that weren't considered when the earlier ban was drafted.
Sullivan rejected that argument.
"The prospect of new technology is not 'new,'" the judge wrote, noting that less-polluting machines were considered and rejected when the Clinton administration was deciding how to reduce the harmful effects of snowmobiling.
In separate claims, the Fund for Animals and other environmental groups challenged the practice of grooming snow-covered roads for snowmobile and snow coach use.
Those groups claimed the Park Service dismissed studies indicating groomed roads harm bison by creating unnatural corridors for them to move within and outside of Yellowstone.
Bison that leave Yellowstone in winter can be rounded up or killed under certain circumstances because many carry a disease ranchers fear could be spread to their cattle.
The Fund for Animals wanted Sullivan to order the Park Service to stop grooming most of the roads in Yellowstone — a ban that would effectively stop snowmobiling in those areas.
Sullivan did not do so. Instead, he ordered the Park Service to give an answer to a 1999 petition filed by one of the groups, the Bluewater Network, that sought rules prohibiting trial grooming in all national parks.
The judge did not direct a particular answer, although he said the Park Service must respond to the petition by Feb. 17.
I agree, How the ƒµ©k does a federal judge have jurisdiction over the President of the United States? Is there something the Constitution I am missing that gives federal judges absolute control over the snowmobile policy in national parks?
I ran 40 miles down the yukon to check snares on the skandic this morning. Not hardly any open water or overflow. Best part of the trip was not another track in the fresh snow. Something to be said for controlling numbers.
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I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
Recent controversies over gay marriage have been a classic example of failing to see the woods for the trees. The most fundamental issue is not gay marriage. The most fundamental issue is who is to decide whether or not to legalize gay marriage -- and all the other decisions that define a free, self-governing people, as distinguished from people living under dictators in black robes.
Substitute "snowmobiles" for "gay marriage" and he has nailed what this case boils down to.
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