9/6/2004

KUFM / KGPR

T. M. Power

 

The Economics of Snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park

 

            The four year long legal tussle over whether snowmobiles should be allowed to continue to dominate the winter environment in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks continues.  Bush Administration lawyers, backed by the governors of Montana and Wyoming, were back in federal court in Wyoming seeking a ruling to strike down once and for all the Clinton-era rule banning snowmobiles in those parks.

            The chief argument being offered for the court to issue an immediate and definitive ruling was economic: namely that businesses and local economies were decimated by the ban and have continued to be harmed by the uncertainty. “There are some extreme gateway community impacts” the Montana lawyer argued, impacts that the Park Service and Clinton Administration did not take into account.

            These assertions are simply repetitions of the claims that have been made by snowmobile interests against any regulation of snowmobiling.  As espoused by the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, the basic argument is that snowmobiling is so big a part of the rural economy that imposing any controls on the damage it may do can only undermine our already limping rural economies.

            When it comes to the Greater Yellowstone area this is just wild hyperbole. Let me cite some of the facts about snowmobiling in that region:

  1. Most experienced snowmobilers do not want to spend much time in Yellowstone National Park because snowmobiling there is on well pack roads and involves traveling slowly, bumper to bumper, breathing other people’s exhaust. There is no challenge. That is the reason that snowmobilers who tow their machines to the Greater Yellowstone area spend only a small part of their time in the Park. They primarily use their machines outside the Park where they can pursue more challenging snow conditions and terrain and travel cross country, off of groomed trails.
  2. The data on winter recreation spending in gateway communities like West Yellowstone show no significant correlation with the level of snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park. Winter spending in West Yellowstone has continued to grow briskly at the same time that the snowmobile entries into the Park have be stagnant or declining.  There is a significant correlation between snowmobile activity outside the Park and recreation spending in West Yellowstone. The most dramatic example of this was back in 1995-1996 when a federal budget stalemate closed the Park during the winter but snowmobilers came anyway to ride outside of the Park.
  3. Clearly there are alternative snowmobiling sites outside of Yellowstone National Park, recreation sites that already are the primary base of support for the winter economies of the gateway communities.  Surveys of experienced snowmobilers in the greater Yellowstone area indicate that their primary interest is not in scenic beauty and wildlife encounters but snow conditions and challenging off-trail terrain.  Those interests lead them away from the packed and congested roads of Yellowstone National Park already.

These facts may explain why about half of the voters and business owners in places like West Yellowstone support the efforts to protect the quality of the National Park experience in Yellowstone by restricting snowmobiling in the Park.  They see the health of their community, economy, and businesses as tied to the continued ability of the National Park to attract a diverse set of visitors during both the winter and the summer.  Noise, pollution, congestion, and harassed wildlife are not part of that prescription. Visitors to a National Park expect something other than an industrial experience. On the other hand, avid snowmobilers do not want what the Park primarily seeks to offer: protected landscapes, wildlife habitat, pristine scenic vistas, and natural wonders.

This set of circumstances suggests an obvious rational solution.  The Park should be managed primarily for its natural values and the quality of the visitor experience. That clearly requires that the character of human visitation be managed so that it does not unreasonably detract from the Park’s primary purposes.  For most visitors to Yellowstone National Park, there is not a close substitute that will do “just as well.”  On the other hand, for most snowmobilers in the greater Yellowstone area, there not only are close substitutes outside the Park but there are superior recreation areas outside the Park.

In those circumstances, the move to shift motorized access to Yellowstone National Park during the winter to guided snow coaches makes both economic and environmental sense. It allows the types of winter recreation in the Park that have the least impact on Park resources and visitor experiences to continue to expand while allowing snowmobiling activity to continue to focus outside of the Park where it is already centered. This also puts the winter economies of the gateway communities on a more sustainable basis and allows the Park to remain a primary source of economic vitality for those communities. 

This would appear to be a far more attractive long run path for the region and the Park than the noisy and polluted future that the International Snowmobile Manufactures Association would like to impose on Yellowstone National Park.