Obama to Restrict Snowmobile Access to Yellowstone National Park

The Obama Administration is considering carrying out a Bush-era plan to restrict the number of snowmobiles that are allowed to access Yellowstone National Park each day. The giant park, which crosses state boundaries into Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, is otherwise inaccessible to visitors in winter months. Lobbyists for the snowmobile industry say that this is just the first step to an outright ban that would effectively close the park in winter months, and cave to environmental concerns raised by those who rarely visit Yellowstone. Environmentalists claim that the snowmobiles are doing damage by compacting loose snow into ice and emitting carbon monoxide.

Salazar Considers Further Yellowstone Snowmobile Restrictions

"The proposed rule would allow continued access to the park in the winter, while ensuring the protection of this national treasure and its wildlife," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The proposed cap would allow only 318 snowmobiles to enter the park per day, which is less than half of the 720 cap that is currently in effect. While environmentalists say that this number is still above the 205 average number of snowmobiles the park sees on a daily basis, snowmobile advocates argue that the daily figure erroneously takes into account non-winter months. Official figures state that last year the peak number of snowmobiles that entered the park on a single day was 426, though the park has seen as many as 1,400 in previous years.

Salazar stated that the 318-machine limit would go in effect for 2 years while the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency studied the impact of the snowmobiles on the natural habitat. According to a spokesperson in Salazar's office, the secretary "wants to make sure that the best science available is being used" to determine the future of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park.

Snowmobile advocacy groups protest that this is just the first step toward an outright ban on snowmobiling, effectively closing a national park to the public for many months out of the year and permanently shuttering a multi-million dollar industry in rural America. These same groups say that the proposal is based on decades-old legislation that fails to take into account advances in technology, specifically the snowmobiles transition to 4-stroke sport bike style engines, which are cleaner, virtually silent (when unmodified), and far more fuel efficient than the 2-stroke dirt bike style engines of old.