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Judge chokes snowmobiles
Ruling rejects Bush plan, calls for no sleds during winter of 2004-05.

By Rebecca Huntington

In a ruling released Tuesday a federal judge put the brakes on snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park by ordering the National Park Service to reinstate a Clinton-era ban on the machines.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that the federal agency, under the Bush administration, was "arbitrary and capricious" in reversing a phaseout of snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

Sullivan ordered the Park Service to reinstate a phaseout of snowmobiles approved under the Clinton administration.

Sullivan called the difference between the two plans "stark."

Under the Clinton plan, snowmobiles would have been gone this winter. Instead the Bush administration reversed course and planned to allow 950 snowmobiles per day in Yellowstone.

Under Tuesday's ruling, the Park Service must cut snowmobiles to 493 per day in Yellowstone this winter and ban them entirely next winter. No snowmobiles will be allowed on Jackson Lake this winter, and only 25 snowmobiles per day will be allowed on the Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail and 25 per day on the Grassy Lake Road.

Yellowstone Superintendent Suzanne Lewis said Tuesday the Park Service will be ready to follow the judge's orders when the park opens today.

"We've made every preparation we can to open up at 7 a.m.," she said. "That's what we intend to do."

The Park Service, however, will have to cancel reservations for visitors who wanted to tour Yellowstone without commercial guides. The Clinton plan requires all snowmobilers to have guides.

Lewis noted that those visitors could instead take a multi-passenger snowcoach into the park. The Clinton plan places no limits on snowcoaches. Lewis estimated 72 snowcoaches, able to carry roughly 700 passengers, would be available this winter.

The ruling will force Yellowstone to suspend plans to award new snowmobile contracts. Instead, the Park Service will stick with existing snowmobile tour operators, who have contracts valid through the end of December, she said.

Lewis declined to respond to criticisms in the ruling, which called the Bush administration plan "politically driven." The agency is not prepared to respond "until we really have time to read and digest the order," she said.

The ruling dismayed but did not surprise snowmobile tour operators.

"The writing's been on the wall," said Jeff Golightly, general manager of Togwotee Mountain Lodge. "The movement to get snowmobiles out of the park is huge."

Golightly declined to comment on the ruling's potential impact to the lodge's snowmobile tours in Yellowstone and Grand Teton this winter. But he said the decision would affect them "tremendously" in the future, as snowmobiles are phased out in favor of snowcoaches.

"The ruling is frightening because it could set a precedent for access to public lands beyond Yellowstone," he said. "I can't imagine [environmentalists] are going to throw up their hands in victory and be satisfied that they're done."

Conservationists praised the decision as a positive precedent.

"Our duty is to take care of our national parks as fully as possible so that we pass them in good health to our grandchildren," said Denis Galvin, a retired deputy Park Service director, who backed the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, one of the groups that sued to reinstate the Clinton-era plan.

"Had we let that principle slip in Yellowstone to benefit the snowmobile industry, it would have set a terrible precedent in all our national parks," said Galvin, who served under presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush.

Judge Sullivan's ruling is peppered with harsh language. While judges typically defer to agency professionals, Sullivan said this case deserved tougher scrutiny because of the "180 degree reversal." He concluded that the Park Service failed to "meet its obligation to explain" the dramatic shift in directions.

"Indeed, there is evidence in the Record that there isn't an explanation for this change, and that the [new study] was completely politically driven and result oriented," he wrote.

Sullivan cites internal Park Service documents that indicate the agency's objective was not to take a new look but to find a way to continue snowmobiling.

He quotes a participant in a Park Service meeting, who stated: "Gale Norton wants to be able to come away saying some snowmobiles are allowed."

Sullivan was unconvinced by Park Service arguments that new technology justified taking a new look at the snowmobile phaseout.

Comments from the Environmental Protection Agency show the Park Service had accurately projected potential benefits of cleaner, quieter snowmobiles in the first plan, he said.

Even after considering those improvements, the Park Service concluded a snowmobile ban would best protect park resources, he wrote.

"The prospect of improved technology is not 'new,'" his opinion said.

Moreover, mitigation measures designed to reduce impacts to wildlife were "significantly flawed" in the Bush plan, he wrote.

The Park Service argued that requiring snowmobilers to travel in groups would reduce encounters with wildlife, he said. But in the final rule, the agency defined a group as one to 12 people. By still allowing snowmobilers to travel alone, the rule eliminated any benefits of group travel, he wrote.

Sullivan also questioned the benefits of requiring visitors to travel with commercial guides. Guides would be allowed to travel up to a third of a mile in front of clients, and their ability to communicate over the noisy machines would be limited, he said.

"Even between passengers on the same machine, it is 'very difficult if not impossible to communicate with the driver over the noise of a snowmobile,'" he wrote, quoting the Park Service.

Sullivan also sided with the Fund for Animals, which also filed suit, in its contention that the Park Service violated federal environmental laws by failing to study an alternative that would have eliminated trail grooming altogether.

The GYC and Fund for Animals lawsuits argue separate points but were consolidated into a single case. The GYC wanted the Clinton plan reinstated. The Fund wanted trail grooming eliminated altogether, which would also bar snowcoaches, allowed under the Clinton plan, from the park.

Sullivan wrote that "it defies logic" that the Park Service did not consider an alternative that would have eliminated trail grooming, given that the impacts grooming has on wildlife, particularly bison, was "one of the major issues." The Fund argues that bison use groomed trails to leave the park and then are slaughtered by Montana livestock officials to protect cattle from brucellosis, a disease many bison carry.

Sullivan stopped short of ordering the Park Service to stop grooming trails. Instead, he ordered the Park Service to give an answer to a 1999 petition filed by the Bluewater Network that sought rules prohibiting trail grooming in all national parks. The judge did not direct a particular answer but said the Park Service must respond to the petition by Feb. 17.

Superintendent Lewis declined Tuesday to say whether the Interior Department would appeal Sullivan's ruling or try to rewrite the Clinton plan.

Golightly said the decision will be "difficult to stomach" for many Jackson residents.

"I think most people want to take care of this country and this land because it's our backyard and our home," Golightly said. "And I think we've been managing it reasonably and giving it the respect it deserves."

­ Will Roberts contributed to this report

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