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SIMPLY SNOWMOBILES - MAYBE NOT

Snowmobiles! A simple enough word. Maybe, maybe not. If that really is a currently accurate description, how does one account for it having become synonymous with the term lightening rod? Bring the topic of snowmobiles up anywhere, with manufacturers, urban or rural dwellers, extreme environmentalists (preservationists), snowmobile users or abusers, natural resource/wildlife managers, and watch the interest and energy begin to flow.

Safe and sound for years within the politically correct industry of recreation, snowmobiles have now come of age. This maturing process, however, has involved far more than the machines, those who make them and/or those who use them. This entire nation is now involved in some way or other with what is in fact a reality check about recreational use of public lands under federal management; and the ethical (honest) implementation of the legal processes required to provide for the voice of the real landowners, i.e., the American public.

Americans put a very high priority on recreation. Combine the word recreation with the words Yellowstone National Park and Grand Teton National Park in the same sentence, and you have yourself a recreationist's dream come true. Unfortunately for the American public, dream is now the only operative word. As recently as Inauguration Day, January 20, 2001 the privilege of riding snowmobiles in these national parks was a reality that Americans took for granted. That reality, however, went out of those parks as Clinton went out of office.

President Bush signed into place on January 20 a presidential memorandum putting a moratorium on the publishing of proposed rules and regulations in the Federal Register. This was done to provide adequate time for the new Administration to carefully review proposed changes. Some of the proposed changes applied to snowmobiling in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

Total defiance and disrespect toward the newly elected and sworn in President were driven home on that very same Inauguration Day by the outgoing Administration. The irony is that they were driven home on a proposed rule change regarding a ban on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

Ignoring the clear and legal instructions of President Bush, outgoing Clinton operatives submitted for publishing, the proposed rule changes in the Federal Register. Knowing how this would complicate any review by attempting to maneuver it outside the presidential memorandum this defiance also meant ignoring unread and unconsidered comments by Americans.

Where the issue of banning snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks is concerned, this final action on the part of the outgoing Administration will only serve to reveal how deceptively the entire legal process guiding this particular public discussion has been handled all along.

Perhaps this departing demonstration of arrogance and insult will serve both the new Administration and the American people well. Perhaps it will drive home the importance of integrity of intent; the importance of attention to and respect for legal public processes; the importance of every word in what is and is not being said; and the importance of the average citizen not assuming that fairness and ethics will carry the day.

This learning curve has a lot of subject matter on it. So, we should not be too discouraged or disheartened by this travesty. We should be glad to know, even at this late hour, the type of deceptions that have and are silencing the voice of the American public.

For at least the past 15 years, decisions of federal natural resource agencies, seeking the ever famous and always touted 'public input' where public lands are concerned, have actually resulted in 'public output'--------as in the public being put outside and kept outside of once accessible public lands. More importantly, however, example after example exists where the science, law and reasonableness of public input have been ignored. The similar thread that seems to bind these past and ongoing examples together is a 'desired future condition' of little or no people.

While snow coaches have been and should continue to be an established mode of transportation in these parks, snowmobiles should not have to be forbidden. Banning snowmobiles is just one of these public input output results! There are many more.

A selected look at some of these will hopefully make for some interesting future reading.

Permission granted to reprint in full or part with full credit given to author.