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Yellowstone snowmobile plan finally getting off its merry-go-round?
March 5, 2013It’s been a couple of years since we’ve checked in on the eternal Snowmobiles in Yellowstone debate, and in what’s sure to be a shock for those who’ve been following the issue since the Clinton administration, not much has changed! During Team Obama’s first summer, Ken Salazar announced that the ongoing string of temporary winter […]
Yellowstone snowmobiles: this winter much like last year
December 17, 2010Been wondering what’s the latest on the Snowmobiles in Yellowstone front? Then head on over to this good long article from New West, which sketches the history and explores the current tone in gateway communities. The short story is that after spending the summer accepting public comments on the latest round of “permanent” winter use […]
Wyoming challenges 2-year Yellowstone snowmobile limits
November 23, 2009As surely as winter follows autumn, Yellowstone National Park’s annual rite of tussling over snowmobile use has arrived just on time. After issuing a proposed 2-year winter use plan in September, and opening its arms to receive a round of public comments that likely mimic those received during the previous three attempts to settle this […]
Here We Go Again: Salazar Cuts Yellowstone Snowmobile Numbers, Wyoming Sues Next Day
August 10, 2009It’s deja vu all over again over again over again, as Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar stepped up as the third Administration to attempt the now seemingly absurd task of setting permanent rules governing the use of snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. Both the Clinton and Bush plans ended up with dueling Federal District Court […]
Yellowstone Opens for Winter Season As Judges Duel for Jurisdiction
December 18, 2008The Bush administration’s 8-years of Yellowstone winter use meddling continues to the bitter end: after immediately overturning the Clinton-era phase-out of snowmobiles in the Park during the winter of 2001, it has, in its final month in office, issued a rule to maintain a 720 snowmobiles/day limit, after a year in which the Park Service […]
Park Service Proposes First Real Limits on Snowmobiles at Yellowstone Since Guided Tours Provision
November 5, 2008Responding to a September Federal Court ruling that tossed the 3rd Yellowstone Winter Use Plan on the cusp of a new winter season, Park managers have released a proposed interim plan that will, for the first time since the original Clinton-era plan, reduce the actual numbers of snow machines in the Park on most of […]
Third Yellowstone Snowmobile Plan Tossed by Federal Court
September 16, 2008The eternal cycle of Yellowstone Winter Use Plans looks to continue for at least one more round, as the third “final” National Park Service rule governing snowmobile access to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks has been tossed out by a Federal District Court after challenges form a consortium of environmental organizations. DC-based judge Emmet […]
New York, just like I pictured it…
April 28, 2017With apologies to Stevie Wonder and to all my college buds who revel in “skyscrapers, and everything!”, I gotta say that THIS is what puts me in a New York state of mind: Wow indeed. As Eric Sanderson, author of the eye-opening 2009 natural history book Mannahatta, says, “If Mannahatta existed today as it did then, it […]
FAA spurns opportunity for quiet area protection in traffic pattern updates
June 30, 2015A new Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) effort to modernize air traffic flow around major cities is ignoring the chance to do slight re-routing that would minimize air traffic over dwindling areas of natural quiet. The FAA is in the midst of a multi-year process to update the traffic patterns in and out of airports in 17 metropolitan areas. Each “metroplex” […]
FAA adds insult to injury with new Grand Canyon flight permits
February 10, 2014Eighteen months after Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Harry Reid (D-NV) joined forces to undermine the National Park Service’s Grand Canyon air tour management plan just before it was set to go into effect, the Federal Aviation Administration apparently feels that the discounted per-flight fee for quiet aircraft is not incentive enough to encourage the […]
Great piece on noise and other regs in National Parks Traveller
March 17, 2011The National Parks Traveller blog recently ran a great piece titled Give Us A National Park, Please, But Not its Regulations. Here’s the lead: We love our national parks. We love the wildlife they hold, the seashores with their sparkling sands, the forests with their wildlife and hiking trails, the soaring red-rock cliffs and plunging […]