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NEWS & OPINION
Public Comments Wanted for Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks Winter Use
Posted: 6/25/2004
DOWNLOAD A SAMPLE LETTER TO SEND TO THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
The National Park Service is currently developing an Environmental Assessment (EA) for a temporary plan and regulations to guide winter use management of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks during the 2004-2005 winter season. As they develop the scope of management alternatives that will be considered by this EA, they are asking for public comments about what you want them to consider.
You may provide scoping comments by one of three methods: 1) mail your comments to Management Assistant's Office, Yellowstone National Park, PO Box 168, Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190, 2) comment by e-mail by going to www.nps.gov/yell/planvisit/winteruse/index.htm and clicking on "Comment on the scope of the EA" at the bottom of the page or on "Internet" in the text at the middle of the page - you will then be asked to type in your name, address and comments, or 3) hand delivering them to the Management Assistant's Office in Yellowstone National Park. Comments must be received by midnight July 13, 2004 to be considered.
Please take time to contact the National Park Service and ask them to consider the following when they develop the range of alternatives for this EA:
- Please consider allowing up to 950 snowmobile entries per day that are fairly distributed between the west, south, east and north entrances. Emphasis should be given to allocations for the west and south entrances to ensure daily entrance limits are maximized where the majority of visitors want to enter from.
- Please continue to emphasize the use of Best Available Technology (BAT) snowmobiles that were successfully used during the 2003-2004 season. Monitoring has shown the impacts of BAT snowmobiles on park resources and values to be very minimal, particularly when compared to the impacts of snowcoaches and summer vehicle traffic.
- Please consider allowing at least 25% of the daily snowmobile entries to be lead by non-commercial guides. The past requirement that made everyone hire a commercial guide was unreasonable, burdensome and caused a significant reduction in snowmobile visitation to the parks.
- Please consider alternatives that allow snowmobile access to all historic groomed roads, including the side trails to scenic points of interest that have been closed to snowmobiles the past few years.
- Please consider alternatives that allow snowmobile and snowplane access by fishermen to Jackson Lake.
- Please continue to allow snowmobile use on the Continental Divide Snowmobile Trail and the Grassy Lake Road since these two trails are important connections to national forest trails in the States of Idaho and Wyoming. Also, please consider allowing commercial snowmobile guides to take groups on these two trails.
DOWNLOAD A SAMPLE LETTER TO SEND TO THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
If the sample letter link does not open the document, please right-click on the link and select to save the file to your local computer.
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