Winter Use In Yellowstone National Park
National Parks Conservation Association’s Yellowstone Field Office is working to protect Yellowstone’s wildlife and restore the park's unique winter quiet and pristine air quality by moving toward a park-friendly accessible snowcoach transportation system.
Latest plan for Yellowstone a step backward
Yellowstone National Park and the National Park Service are once again preparing a long-term plan for managing winter use in America’s first national park. We anticipate this will be the last environmental study leading to a permanent plan.
On June 29, 2012 the National Park Service released its Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact statement outlining how visitors will access Yellowstone in the winter.
You can read Tom Kiernan's take on the proposal here.
You can view the draft plan and proposed alternatives at the NPS Planning, Environment, and Public Comment (PEPC) website. Over the past ten years, NPCA, our conservation partners and dedicated citizens like you have made enormous progress in our quest to secure the best possible protection for Yellowstone National Park. Together we've built support for Yellowstone's lower-impact snowcoach transportation system, which continues to grow in popularity each year; significantly ushered out the noisiest and most-polluting forms of winter access; and moderated disruption to wintering wildlife. We're getting somewhere and you have helped!
Yellowstone National Park has indeed become healthier as snowmobile numbers have decreased and visitors have turned increasingly to snowcoaches as their means of visiting and enjoying Yellowstone. However, we still do not have a long-term plan in place that best protects Yellowstone National Park. NPS is proposing to continue recreational snowmobile use in Yellowstone National Park despite disclosing in a new, major study that the significantly larger amount of traffic involved would be worse for Yellowstone's wildlife, air quality, and unique soundscape than other transportation alternatives.
Read the comments submitted to NPS by NPCA and our allies from the previous EIS:
- NPCA’s comments on the Yellowstone Winter Use DEIS (PDF)
- Comments pertaining to Sylvan Pass, the east entrance to Yellowstone (PDF)
Learn More
- Learn more about Yellowstone National Park.
- Learn more about winter use on the National Park Service website.
- Learn more about NPCA's Yellowstone Field Office.
In the News
New winter-use plan for Yellowstone is a step backward, Bozeman Daily Chronicle, August 6, 2012
