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Comments due Monday on new winter use proposal
By Carole Cloudwalker
This document was published online on Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Citing “serious reservations,” the Cody chamber last week nevertheless issued a letter of guarded support for the newest Yellowstone winter use plan.
Kathleen Jachowski, chairman of the chamber's government affairs committee, and chamber director Kimberly Jones, issued a statement saying the daily reduction in snow coach numbers through the East Entrance from 30 to 20 units is “disappointing.”
They encouraged the Park Service, which issued the new numbers, to “reset the number to 30.”
In addition, the “socio-economic impacts of prolonging the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process continue to have serious negative effects for Cody, other gateway communities and the states surrounding Yellowstone,” they said. “Continuous change hampers our ability to effectively market our communities as business and recreation destinations.”
They said continued uncertainty about what Cody has to offer relating to Yellowstone winter access “makes it almost impossible for people to plan to visit this area with any confidence.”
The two chamber leaders said the communities surrounding the park “have attempted, through the many difficult years of this process, to sustain and grow our markets ... but with persistent uncertainty and a constantly changing recreational framework, people understandably will lose interest in trying to determine what there is for them here, and likely will choose to visit elsewhere.”
The Rejected Plan
A winter use plan that included travel over Sylvan Pass in winter months was hammered out and approved, but the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued an opinion this fall that rejected the plan, the Record of Decision and an associated rule.
The plan rejected by Judge Emmet Sullivan would have allowed up to 540 commercially guided, cleaner and quieter “Best Available Technology (BAT) snowmobiles and 83 snow coaches a day to enter Yellowstone this winter, beginning Dec. 15.
In Grand Teton it would have allowed 40 unguided, BAT snowmobiles a day on Jackson Lake for ice fishing. It also would have allowed 25 snowmobiles a day to travel on the Grassy Lake Road.
The New NPS Plan
The preferred alternative under the new NPS plan would allow 318 commercially guided, BAT snowmobiles, and 78 commercially guided snow coaches per day in Yellowstone.
The preferred alternative also would provide for motorized travel over Sylvan Pass and Yellowstone's East Entrance road in winter, as agreed to by the Sylvan Pass Study Group this past summer.
Daily snowmobile limits in the new plan are slightly above last winter's average of 294 snowmobiles per day.
That's well below the 720 a day allowed the past four winters, and lower than the 540 snowmobiles a day that would have been allowed this winter under the plan rejected by the court.
The daily snowcoach limit is the same as during the past four years.
The new plan, which will have a three-year shelf-life while a permanent solution is worked out, is “disappointing” to Park County commissioner Tim French.
“I'm disappointed we had to go back to another temporary plan,” he said. “I'm also disappointed that some judge threw out years of good work. We thought we had a good thing and had it settled.
“On the flip side,” he added, “I'm glad they're trying to keep it (Yellowstone and the East Entrance) open in the interim, until the courts settle it.”
He said he is “trying to stay optimistic, after eight years of working on it,” even though “one person at his whim can negate years of work.”
He said judges “are not our elected representatives,” and suggested that if they were, “they could be voted out of office” if people disagreed with their actions.
“It's checks that we can't balance” to allow environmental groups to “go venue-shopping” for courts favorable to their views, he added.
The NPS is seeking public comment by Nov. 17 on its latest proposal.
Yellowstone is scheduled to open for the winter season Dec. 15.
Both the EA and the proposed rule are available for review and comment at http://www.regulations.gov.
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