Take Action: Urge the National Park to Protect Yellowstone in Winter

Our nation’s first national park and most iconic winter sanctuary needs your help. The National Park Service is developing a long-term plan to guide winter use in Yellowstone and I’m hoping you’ll join me in urging Park officials to continue Yellowstone’s remarkable recovery rather than backsliding to numbers of over-snow-vehicles that jeopardized this national treasure in the first place. Since 2004, cleaner air, more periods of quiet, and a boom in visitor enjoyment have taken hold as Yellowstone has transitioned from a “Wild West” racetrack of loud and polluting snowmobiles to access with multi-passenger snowcoaches facilitating ski and snowshoe outings, interpretative tours, wildlife viewing and photography. Yet park managers are considering options that would turn the clock back and allow more over-snow vehicles than in recent years. Please help complete the transition to a quieter, cleaner and healthier Yellowstone by commenting right now.

Deadline for comments is March 9th.

HOW TO COMMENT:
Please take a few minutes to write a personal letter including the points from the sample letter below. Be sure to include information about your personal experience as a skier, snowshoer or quiet winter visitor to Yellowstone in winter. Click here http://parkplanning.nps.gov/commentForm.cfm?documentID=45665 to submit your comment letter online.

Or, you can mail comments to:

Yellowstone National Park
Winter Use, Supplemental EIS
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone NP, WY 82190

Sample Comment Letter:  (back to top)

Superintendent Dan Wenk
Yellowstone National Park
Winter Use DEIS
P.O. Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming 82190

Dear Superintendent Wenk:

As a Nordic skier [or snowshoer, winter hiker, etc.] who values the natural sights and sounds of Yellowstone in winter, I appreciate the improvements to Yellowstone’s winter environment resulting from reduced motorized traffic and the requirements for cleaner, quieter machines and for commercial guiding of all snowmobiles. I also appreciate your renewed emphasis on providing better services for skiers, snowshoers and other low-impact winter visitors.

Your acknowledgement in last year’s Draft Winter Use Plan that visitors highly value quiet in Yellowstone and your proposal to designate certain side roads as ski and snowshoe routes and to limit motorized travel on the east side of the park in March are positive steps. I urge you to keep moving our flagship national park in this direction so that visitors can better enjoy the park’s wonders with minimal interference from traffic.

The National Park Service has repeatedly confirmed that the reduction of daily snowmobile numbers over the past eight winters to approximately 250 per day has been the principal factor driving Yellowstone’s improved air quality, expanded quiet, and reduced disturbance of wildlife. I am deeply concerned to learn that you are considering management options that would allow daily snowmobile numbers in the park to vary from zero to 840, or even zero to 350 -- depending on the discretion of tour businesses. Please do not forsake stewardship of Yellowstone by increasing vehicle numbers above current levels and do not substitute the uncertainty of “market forces” for the clarity yielded by so many scientific studies.
In addition, Yellowstone’s requirement that all snowmobile groups must be led and supervised by professional guides should remain in place. Experienced professional guides have been crucial in reducing impacts to wildlife and violations of park rules. The NPS has rightly called the commercial guide requirement a “fundamental” mitigation of adverse impacts that result when snowmobiles mix with winter-stressed wildlife in Yellowstone’s uniquely sensitive corridors. Please do not go backward on this or any other aspect of Yellowstone’s improving conditions.
I urge you to adopt a long-term winter use plan that caps over-snow vehicle numbers at or below those experienced during the past five winter seasons, numbers at which Yellowstone is on a path to again become America’s most beloved winter sanctuary. Above all, please give Yellowstone a sustainable winter transportation system befitting of the world’s first national park, one that minimizes impacts while accommodating enjoyment of Yellowstone’s unparalleled winter environment.

Sincerely,

Name
Address

For more information on the Yellowstone Winter Use Plan, visit the Park’s website at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=40806