Park proposes winter plan

Yellowstone National Park rangers are hoping to settle a decades-old debate between winter thrill-seekers and environmentalists with the newest winter usage plan for snow vehicles.

It’s all about protecting the park, versus allowing people to actually enjoy it. Those in charge are finally optimistic that they’ve found an answer.

After a decade of studying environmental impact, regulating and going back to the drawing board, Yellowstone’s public affairs chief Al Nash said that the park is finally onto something when it comes to allowing snow vehicles.

“The goal is to have cleaner, quieter park than we have now, but provide for a few more visitors to come in during the winter,” Nash said, which has proven to be a complicated balance. “We had some real challenges with sound quality and people speeding and air quality in the park.”

Then there are the communties whose economies rely on the park. Clyde Seely owns Three Bear Lodge in West Yellowstone, and operates a fleet of 150 snowmobiles and nine snow coaches.

“We operators haven’t known for sure whether we can order snow mobiles or snow coaches for the coming season because things change so constantly,” Seely explained.

Visitors often want to rent the machines, but aren’t sure if they’ll be among the lucky 318 snowmobilers allowed in the park each day.

“That’s not the way people travel,” Nash explained. “They don’t come with one snowmobile.”

The proposed plan would allow 110 transportation events per day inside the park. An event is defined as seven snowmobiles in a group, or one snow coach. There can be no more than 50 groups of snowmobiles in the park each day.

Current environmental standards for all snowmobiles will remain.

“I think their approach is very conservative,” Seely said. “But still it allows for some more flexibility.”

The limit on 318 snowmobiles per day is still in place for the next two years, but Nash said the park wants to increase that number.

The Greater Yellowstone Coalition is taking a more environmental stance on the issue, sending us this statement:

“While we enthusiastically support the premise that winter visitation should be encouraged that is cleaner and quieter than what we have today, we don’t believe Yellowstone’s proposed plan to jump snowmobile use to almost 500 machines per day is supported by the data [that is provided].”

The National Park Service wants public opinion. It will allow comment on the plan online until August 20. Click here for a link to the plan.

Four public meetings, each starting at 6:30 p.m., have been set in communities surrounding the park:

Monday, July 16 at The Virginian Lodge in Jackson, Wyo. Tuesday, July 17 at the Holiday Inn in West Yellowstone, Mont. Wednesday, July 18 at the Wingate by Wyndham in Bozeman, Mont. Thursday,, July 19 at the Holiday Inn in Cody, Wyo.

See http://parkplanning.nps.gov/documentsList.cfm?parkID=111&projectID=40806.