detailed analysis of the national park snowmobile ban

The Service's Closure Decision

Despite the fact that the snowmobile use designation process is supposed to involve the public and be made based on the factual situation at the particular unit or area, the Service has unilaterally decided that snowmobile use is bad no matter what and no matter where. It has, in one fell swoop, banned all recreational snowmobiling (official use is still permitted). The Service has announced, as a matter of universal applicability, that snowmobiles are an inappropriate and non-essential means of providing winter access to all Park units. It has ordered the commencement of the administrative process to repeal all current special regulations, which allow recreational snowmobiling use in particular units. And it has done all this without the benefit of public comment on the wisdom and necessity of such an action (other than a one-sided, biased, and inaccurate petition for rulemaking filed by anti-use groups), much less on whether this action is warranted everywhere in every situation.

The Service is not authorized to make such a sweeping decision without the benefit of a notice and comment rulemaking, which would provide the Service with the information necessary to make such a decision. Even the groups who petitioned for a closure of Park units to snowmobile use acknowledge that such a change in policy must follow a rulemaking. In Yellowstone, the Service is considering the snowmobiling issue in a full-blown rulemaking, EIS process. Yet, the service has decided to close all other units to snowmobile use without the benefit of the rulemaking and NEPA processes.

That the Service will presumably undertake some kind of process for the individual closures does not change the illegality of the Service's action. These individual processes will be empty gestures by the Service. It has already made up its mind to close all units (with a few statutory exceptions). In response to the petition for rulemaking, the Service committed to "immediately begin the administrative process to repeal all current special regulations promulgated pursuant to 35 C.F.R 2.18 which allow general recreational snowmobile use in particular units of the National park Service." Memorandum from Don Barry to Director, National Park Service, dated April 26, 2000 (emphasis added). Because the nationwide closure was done without rulemaking, the Service gave the anti-use groups more than they requested.

These individual processes can have only one result - repeal of the special regulation allowing snowmobile use regardless of the actual on-the-ground conditions related to that use. Instead of evaluating whether snowmobile use is actually having any adverse impact in the particular unit, the Service has decided as a matter of policy and philosophy that snowmobiles, no matter how, where, when, and in what frequency used, are bad and must be banned. In the Service's view, one rider in a massive unit is too many. The law does not allow the agency to have a closed mind when making individual closure decision as required by the E.O.s and the Service's own regulations. See, e.g., McLough Steep Prods. Corp. v. Thomas, 838 F.2d 1317, 1323 (D.C. Cir. 1988)(agency must keep mind open during decision making process).

The facts regarding snowmobile impacts do not support the ban on snowmobiles. In addition, the Service's closed-minded zeal to reverse decades of practice and policy and close all National Park units to snowmobile use has caused it to ignore principles of fairness and due process. The Service has shut the public out of its decision-making and adopted an ill-advised and overly broad policy.