WEST YELLOWSTONE, Mont. — It was supposed to have been a merry Christmas party for the 200 or so employees of West Yellowstone's Holiday Inn, and for an extra hour it was. Then Clyde Seely, owner of the lodge, stood up and broke the news:
"I didn't want to spoil this night, but an hour ago we learned the judge struck down the Bush plan to allow snowmobiling in Yellowstone (National Park). At this point we don't know the full ramifications of the decision," he said. "I'm sorry."
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled late Tuesday in Washington, D.C., that the Bush administration should not have set aside a Clinton administration plan to ban snowmobiles from the national park.
The park was to have opened today at 7 a.m. Late Tuesday, however, the National Park Service informed businesses in West Yellowstone that there would be a conference call at 8:30 a.m. to explain the decision's consequences.
Sullivan's ruling effectively reinstated a Clinton phase-out plan. Now, under that plan, 490 snowmobiles per day will be allowed through the four gates to the park this season, and unless the decision is overturned, the park will be closed to the machines next winter. Under the Bush plan, 950 of the cleaner, quieter machines were to have been allowed into the park each day for years to come.
Here, where the town's economy is based on two seasons — summer and winter — additional cuts will be devastating, said Mary Sue Costello, head of the West Yellowstone Chamber of Commerce.
Last year, on the very busiest days, upward of 1,200 machines passed through the west gate from the community of West Yellowstone into the park. Under the Bush plan, the quota would have been 550. The new limit will be 278 machines per day through the west gate. Next winter, snowmobiles will be banned. The west entrance to the park is by far the busiest.
"We would have been hit pretty hard by a limit of 550. Now, dropping it down even more is going to make it very difficult," Seely said. "Many businesses are going to go out of business. They won't be able to survive. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs."
A suit filed by the environmental group Bluewater Network out of San Francisco brought about the Clinton administration's plan to phase out snowmobiles from the parks. The Bush administration revisited the issue and came up with a plan to limit access and require access only by new machines with the "best available technology," basically bringing in cleaner, quieter snowmobiles.
Several environmental groups, including the Bluewater Network, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Fund for Animals, filed suit challenging the change and argued that even the "BAT" machines produced unacceptable pollution and health risks.
In a press release the groups said, "The noise and pollution from thousands of snowmobiles destroys Yellowstone's clean air and quiet and disturbs its unique wildlife — including bison, elk, grizzly bears and gray wolves."
The Park Service, in issuing its decision to open the park, argued that the new machines were not considered in the Clinton decision.
Sullivan rejected that argument.
"The prospect of new technology is not 'new,' " the judge wrote, noting that less-polluting machines were considered and rejected when the Clinton administration was deciding how to reduce the harmful effects of snowmobiling.
The judge ordered the Park Service to follow the old plan that would eventually phase out snowmobiles in favor of snow coaches to carry visitors into the park.
Currently, fewer than 10 percent of the 180,000 people who visit the park in the winter choose to ride in snow coaches. Environmental groups argue that without a choice and without noisy snowmobiles, more people would opt to ride inside a coach.
On another issue, Sullivan ordered the National Park Service to respond by Feb. 17 to a challenge by Fund for Animals to stop grooming roads inside the park.
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