Winter Wonderland Not So Quiet
Yellowstone: Still Noisy After All These Years
By Brodie Farquhar, 10-24-06
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| Photo courtesy the National Park Service. | |
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For the third winter in a row, research by the National Park Service (NPS) shows that snowmobile noise continues to exceed Yellowstone’s standards, even as the number of snowmobiles entering the park has declined.
NPS data indicates that the loudest spots in Yellowstone are Old Faithful, and the roads between West Thumb and Old Faithful, as well as Madison Junction and the West Entrance.
The Coalition of National Park Service Retirees (CNPSR), a watchdog organization of 545 NPS veterans, said the chronic snowmobile noise problem at Yellowstone interferes with visitors’ opportunities to enjoy natural conditions in Yellowstone and conflicts directly with new management policies for the national parks adopted by the Bush administration earlier this year.
Under the Temporary Winter Use Plan, about to start its third winter season, Yellowstone is allowed 720 snowmobiles per day. Yet the number of snowmobiles park-wide during the past three winters has averaged only 250 per day; and still the noise standards have been exceeded.
Despite this, Senator Conrad Burns of Montana is seeking to authorize 720 snowmobiles per day in Yellowstone through a rider he has placed on the Senate’s Interior Appropriations Bill.
“How the administration responds to this conflict between snowmobile noise in Yellowstone and its newly-adopted policies will tell Americans a great deal about the administration’s commitment to stewardship in the national parks,” said CNPSR Executive Council Chairman Bill Wade, a former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park. “The new management policies were adopted with strong bipartisan support and the administration was widely and duly praised for its pledge to put conservation first in the national parks. But that pledge will be seen as a sham, and should be, if the administration fails to adhere to its policies in our first national park.”
The NPS management policies were finalized in late August by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, reaffirming that the overarching responsibility of NPS is to conserve park resources in an “unimpaired” condition.
That's in marked contrast to an earlier, highly controversial rewrite of the policies spearheaded by Paul Hoffman, a deputy assistant secretary of Interior at the time, former aide to Rep. Dick Cheney and former director of the Cody, Wyoming chamber of commerce.
The report suggests that noise can be lowered by park officials taking several steps, such as:
- Lowering speed limits,
- Cutting down on the number of small groups and
- Finding ways to reduce unnecessary idling and rapid acceleration.
Although on average snowmobiles were audible for more time than snowcoaches, snowcoaches in general had higher sound levels, especially at higher speeds. The reduced sound and audibility in the report is largely explained by fewer snowmobiles in the park, the guided group requirements and the change from two to four-stroke engine technology.
And yet, snowmobiles meeting best available technology (BAT) requirements, shows that 2006 snowmobile models are getting worse, not better, at meeting these requirements since 2002.
Yellowstone will have a draft of the latest environmental impact statement finished and released to the public for comment later this winter. The alternatives include:
No-action alternatives
1) Snowcoach only alternative – zero snowmobiles.
2) Continue the current temporary winter use plan. There are bills in the House and Senate to do just that.
3) Go back to 1983 regulations, before the 2001 regulations to phase-out snowmobiles.
4) No motorized oversnow acess and no plowing – no snowmobiles and no snowcoaches.
Action alternatives
1) Continue temporary winter use plan with minor modifications, such as closing or leaving the East Entrance open.
2) Snowcoaches only, but require BAT for snowcoaches, close the East Entrance road and limit trips to 120 per day.
3) Close most roads to oversnow vehicle travel, except for South Entrance to Old Faithful, which would remain open to snowmobile and snowcoach travel.
4) Expand snowmobile numbers to 1,025 per day in Yellowstone and 250 in Grand Teton and the Parkway.
5) Allow 540 snowmobiles per day in Yellowstone and 75 elsewhere; all snowmobiles must meet BAT standards and 20 percent of snowmobiles in Yellowstone could travel without a commercial guide.
6) Add wheeled vehicles to snowmobile/snowcoach mix. Plow west-side roads from Mammoth to Old Faithful and West Yellowstone for 100 per day commercially-guided wheeled vehicles only.
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Comments
It sounds like it would be better to let snowmobiles go individually instead of all having to travel together. Of course it would be much more difficult to make the desired "noise level" come out the way the anti snowmobilers want. What happened to the "pollution levels"? did they have to give up on them?
There are many problems with letting sleds go individually -- continual noise, the risk of wildlife harassment, safety and speeding violations.
Casey: I don't know. Good question and will find out.
Why do the levels only apply in the wintertime, it didn't say why, just that only winter levels applied. None the less the actual levels are extremely low. Remember originally the rangers at the West Y entrance had masks issued to them and air quality was the big issue, but at no time did it go over acceptable levels.
So now noise is the big issue, I can testify that 10 machines are more noisy than 1 or 2. I live on the highway on a highway to Sturgiss, and I can tell you that several machines are much more noticable than 1 or 2.
Studies that have assessed impact on wildlife have found they are more spooked and disturbed by skiers or others on foot than machines. It isn't like they never see vehicles. The buffs go down the roadway winter or summer, and spring or fall for that matter. There is no reason at all to think those on snowmobiles are any less concerned for wildlife than any othe visitor to Yellowstone.
I didn't delve into the numbers issue, but it looks like the snow coaches will be limited too. But I have to wait until I have time to go back and study that more.
It seems to be a sharing issue when it all comes down to it.
Environmental grups like the Yellowstone Association could organize classes to identify weeds and eradication of them with hands on experience. One class held in back country sites and one in the regular area would be good.
You see I feel the NPs, of course Yellowstone is my first love, are not only "ours" to enjoy, I feel we have some responsibility too. More so than those who never visit a park, or at least not one of the popular ones.
I also disagree that the 2006 snowmobiles are getting worse. The 2002 models had about 40 HP and the 2006 models listed have up to 120 HP with very little emissions. The manufacturers are now making BAT snowmobiles that appeal to the snowmobiling public so that people across the country are now buying them which helps improve emissions across the country and not just in Yellowstone. The manufacturers can then improve the emissions now that people are buying them and not just the rental companies wanting to run them inside Yellowstone. A tripling of power with very little additional emissions is truly an advancement for the manufacturers because they are being put into use all across the country.
Certainly instead of designating more parks during the previous administrations, it might have been wise to spend the money on maintaining what we have.
Is there waste in this or any other government institution? That is like saying will Old Faithful go off today, of course. That is a problem with built in bureaucracy.
Back to snowmobile noise, can someone explain to me why they would go to the most popular park in the country, then compain about the noise? Why not go to a remote location where it is quiet, there are a lot of places like that...at least in Wyoming. I expect people in Yellowstone, and people are noisy.
Lots of veterans hold those passes--why, it would be like not supporting the troops to get rid of those programs! (She said, tongue in cheek...)
That is funny and absolutely correct!
Look at Marions comments on global warming. GW is ABSOLUTELY irrefutable, yet since Marion knows nothing about it or has never seen first hand proof of it, then it must not be true.
I do think all of the passes are a bad thing if someone else is going to have pay to make up the difference. I have the old lady pass. Since I feel guilty I donate to the little boxes that go straight to the park, and I buy annual passes for my family. I will go to Yellowstone even if it cost me $100 for my pass, and regular price for camping. It is ridiculous for a 100,000 motor home to get half price camping. and it is just as ridiculous for those who have the time and money to camp in the back country to get free camping. There are nearly 300 back country sites, at $10. per night, that is $3000 per day extra that could be taken in.
The other is the foreign visitors paying the same tax subsidized rate as Americans.
I know the global warming thing must drive you crazy, especially with all of the global warming hurricanes that were predicted and hit this year. And to think I ignore evidence like that.
As I have said before we were supposed to have all frozen to death by now according to the experts in the 70s.
Action #5: I wouldn't support anything that allows unguided visits. I think the majority of snowmobiling visitors to Yellowstone try to be obedient and respectful to the regulations, but there are definitely people who would see an unbroken stretch of powder in a closed area and the temptation would be too much for them. I think guiding is necessary to resource protection at this point.
Action #6: I'd really rather we didn't expand wintertime access in the park. I believe the wildlife would see the easier pathways of plowed roads and naturally gravitate toward them. That would lead to increased wildlife contact with people (whether they were forced to remain in the c-g vehicles or not), potential for wildlife mortality due to vehicle/animal accidents, and once an animal was in a plowed corridor, it could be really difficult or impossible for them to get back out again in order to get to cover and/or additional feeding opportunities.
Since you asked... ;-)
Terry Spear, head of the Safety, Health and Industrial Hygiene Department at Montana Tech in Butte was commissioned by the National Park Service to do a study focusing on employee exposure to certain air contaminants and noise related to snowmobile use Yellowstone. The study found that workers exposed to a range of air contaminants and noise were ''well below'' Occupational Safety and Health Administration Permissible Exposure Limits and other established limits. The only area of concern, when it came to noise, was with those who rode snowmobiles for much of their workday, the study said.
Kevin Schneider, a planner for Yellowstone Park said park officials are generally pleased with the study's findings. He said they show that restrictions on snowmobiles, including requiring the use of cleaner, quieter machines, are having an effect.
The West Yellowstone entrance, and the Madison warming hut were the focus areas of the study as this area is typically the park's busiest for snowmobile traffic. The study was also conducted during the extended Martin Luther King and President's Day weekends, a time that the environmentalists have traditionally conducted their tests as these two weekends and Christmas previously until now produced the most condemning results.
This study bodes well for the $100 million + snowmobile tourism industry of the Yellowstone gateway communities and is a quite a blow for the anti-snowmobile activists. The current snowmobile rules are to remain in effect through the winter of 2006-07, allow for up to 720 snowmobiles per day to enter Yellowstone.
I'm wondering whether the snowmobile tourism will ever recover back to 1,000+ days, for several reasons.
One, the sale of snowmobiles has gone down nationally for nine of the past 10 years. (See sales stats at http://www.snowmobile.org) If the industry as a whole is in decline (would love to know why), how can Yellowstone fight that trend?
Two, Yellowstone uses 4-stroke cruiser sleds exclusively -- no more fast, light, noisy, polluting 2-strokers. That means that the fundamental market demographics have changed from speedsters to cruisers.
Three, growth in snowcoach numbers is much bigger than snowmobile numbers, even as gateway communities make progress in marketing.
Four, snowcoaches can be retrofitted to be super-clean machines.
There are some national parks that have banned over-snow machines, but aside from a few purists, no one is advocating a complete ban. Most of the conservation groups would like to see snowcoaches only.
Also, the improvements in park conditions (noise, pollution) have been helped with Best Available Technology sleds, but even moreso, by the fewer numbers of visitors. The key question here is whether conditions will deteriorate with larger numbers or not.