Idaho Falls Post Register
EDITORIAL
5/21/03

Elsewhere on this page is an open letter to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
It urges her not to allow snowmobiles into Yellowstone National Park.

You've heard the message before. What's new here are the people who signed
it--men who know the National Park Service inside and out.

Career civil servants and political appointees.

Republicans and Democrats.

Moderate Republicans and conservative Republicans.

And all are saying the same thing.

"I can not recall any time in the history of the National Park Service when
eight leaders with Democratic and Republican backgrounds have actually sat
down to agree unanimously and this strongly on any point," says Al Runte of
Seattle, who has been writing about the national parks for 35 years.

The list reads like a who's who of park service officials. These are not
ideological men. They are pragmatists, some of whom worked for both
political parties. For example, Former Park Service Director Russell E.
Dickenson was something of a survivor. He began his term under Democratic
President Jimmy Carter--and his Interior secretary Cecil Andrus--and
continued under Republican Ronald Reagan--and his Interior chief James
Watt. Indeed, Dickenson outlasted the controversial Watt by almost two
years.

Bill Clinton's first national park director, Roger G. Kennedy, was a
Republican who waged an unsuccessful campaign for Congress.

They're not trying to convert the national parks into wilderness areas. They
recognize the fact that ordinary citizens have a right to visit their parks
without strapping on a backpack and hiking in.

Many of these men presided over the expansion of snowmobile use at
Yellowstone.

But there's a line--and Norton is about to cross it. Yellowstone is a park,
not a playground.

On one side of that line is preserving the park as a place where nature is
preserved. On the other side is yielding to human convenience and profit.

You don't need snowmobiles to enter the park during the winter. The Clinton
administration proposed phasing out snowmobiles in favor of snowcoaches.

Study after study --including the latest conducted by the Bush
administration--has found that snowmobiles cause stress to wildlife when
these animals are trying to survive the winter.

Snowmobiles cause pollution.

Policing them is more expensive--about $1.3 million a year--than using
snowcoaches.

A snowmobile ban has broad public support.

And eliminating snowmobiles--while tough on the people who rent them at the
gateway communities--would not hurt the overall economies of those towns.

True, the compromise that Norton is considering--a cap on the number of
snowmobiles allowed in the park and a requirement that these machines use
cleaner, quieter four-stroke engines--is an improvement over the present
situation. But over time, former deputy Park Service Director Denis Galvin
predicts, it will mean even more snowmobiles in the park and a diminution of
what makes Yellowstone special.

What really matters at Yellowstone? Norton gets to decide. She's getting
some good advice. She ought to take it.