Blue Planet: The crawl of the wild

In case you were wondering why so many people don't vote:

The National Park Service announced a policy this week covering winter snowmobile use in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The policy essentially allows snowmobile traffic to increase during the park's 85-day winter season.

The proposed policy, which will be finalized in the spring, reverses a Clinton administration plan to eliminate snowmobiling from the parks.

For those countless Americans who have never been snowmobiling, I can report from field experiments that it is duller than soccer but not as good for you. Olympic wrestling hero Rulon Gardner lost a toe to frostbite in a snowmobile accident and snowmobiles routinely emit air pollutants in excess of Environmental Protection Agency standards. National Park rangers at park entrance stations that admit snowmobiles routinely report headaches, dizziness and disorientation.

Despite the well-documented tendency of snowmobiling to induce drowsiness, the snowmobile policy was one of the hottest topics the Park Service ever had to deal with. About 340,000 people submitted comments, and 270,000 wanted snowmobiling eliminated from the parks altogether. Winter visitors would only be allowed via snowcoach -- a sort of bus on treads.

If you're keeping score, that's 4-to-1 in the "no snowmobiles" column.

Yet the Park Service has approved instead a program that will allow 1,100 snowmobiles a day in the two parks, an increase of about 17 percent, according to preliminary figures the service released Tuesday.

Let's say this for the policy: It is the first time any limit at all has been set on "snowmachines" -- a more generic name for the things -- in the parks. But in setting it, the administration has ignored its own science and overwhelming public sentiment.

Steve Thomas, the Northern Plains representative of the Sierra Club, said, "It's fairly astounding to me, given the preponderance of public comments and the science, that it went this way. Somebody's not listening."

Politically, this deafness is safe, however. How many votes are they going lose? Probably none. It also satisfies a small but vocal and well-heeled, off-road-vehicle crowd.

In introducing this policy, administration officials engaged in one of the most impressive displays of gobbledygook I've ever heard.

John Sachlin, planner at Yellowstone, said these limits will result, "compared to the daily peak, on a historical basis, I'd say a dramatic reduction in snowmobile use overall." Remember, by the Park Service's own data, presented at the same news conference, the policy would allow at least a 17-percent overall increase in snowmobiling in Yellowstone above current levels. Some environmental groups calculate the increase at more like 35 percent, though their arithmetic seldom is more reliable than the Park Service's.

Grand Teton National Park Superintendent Steve Martin said that going from the Clinton policy of zero snowmobiles in the crown jewel of America's national parks to a 17-percent increase in snowmobiles actually was no change in policy. The new policy, he said, "Allows us to focus on how we're going to do it, not what we're gonna do. The 'what we're gonna do' hasn't changed."

What they were "gonna" do before was allow zero snowmobiles over the winter season. What they're "gonna" do now is allow 93,500 snowmobiles, roughly the population of Bloomington, Ind. -- assuming the historical average of 1.3 people per snowmobile.

We have gotten used to "spin" from administrations of both political parties, but this is not even good spin -- it is Orwellian doublespeak at its worst.

In making this policy change, the Park Service and the Bush administration are showing a touching faith in technology. They are going to require snowmobiles entering the parks use the "best available technology." The four major snowmobile manufacturers all produce 4-stroke engines, which have cleaner emissions and are marginally quieter than 2-stroke motors.

True, the engines are significantly cleaner. Manufacturers have achieved a 90-percent reduction in hydrocarbon emissions and a 70-percent cut in carbon monoxide. But the improvement of which they speak is relative. According to a Park Service report, a 2-stroke snow machine driven at a steady pace puts out 1,000 times more carbon monoxide than a 1988 Chevrolet Corsica driven the same way.

In other words, the Park Service has set the requirements for cleaner snowmobiles based not on what is safest and best for the park resources, but on what the snowmobile industry has been able to achieve.

Very little independent, controlled research of the 4-stroke engines has been done. A 2001 study by the Montana Department of Environmental Quality found even with the 4-stroke engines, ambient levels of carbon monoxide would exceed the Montana one-hour air quality standard by 129 percent, with fewer than 150 snowmobiles "having emissions similar to those estimated for the high range of ... 4-stroke type snowmobiles." I should note that the tests used specially modified snowmobiles, because commercially produced ones were not available at the time.

So the Park Service is not requiring snowmobile manufacturers to meet air quality standards to protect park resources -- it is only requiring them to do their best.

The results for noise are much the same. In tests conducted by Jackson Hole Scientific Investigations in September 2001 for the state of Wyoming, 4-stroke engines were between 1-percent and 7-percent quieter than existing 2-stroke engines. But because there will be more engines in the parks under the new plan, the overall noise level will remain the same or even grow a little louder.

It is possible to make a convincing case for allowing some snowmobiles in the parks. Snowmobilers are people, too. But that has not been accomplished so far. The administration spin on this issue says more about its priorities, which seldom include sound environmental policies, than it does about the protection of the national parks. This is a nakedly political decision, trading Yellowstone's air quality, wildlife and peace in for satisfaction of a small industrial lobby.

As the Sierra Club's Thomas said, "Industry, any industry, in the West has the ear of the congressional delegations. If it makes money, it's okay. regardless of its impact on the environment or on wildlife. This goes right up through the Bush administration."