Nausea ad nauseam
in Yellowstone
Commentary
by DICK DORWORTH
The Bush
administration and its Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton have the
environmental ethics and sensibilities of a two-stroke engine.
Yellowstone
is our original National Park, and it is rightfully known as the Crown
Jewel of the National Park System. It provides many services to our world,
including that of a somewhat safe refuge for bison, elk, wolves, grizzly
bear, bald eagles, trumpeter swans and a wide variety of other creatures.
Yellowstone also provides a refuge for human beings from the ills and
cacophony of modern civilization. Like every National Park during tourist
season(s) (like the earth itself) Yellowstone suffers from an influx of
too many people for its fragile environment to handle without damage.
But
Yellowstone in winter is an environmental disaster, a befouled jewel. The
Bush administration, not surprisingly, completely supports this disaster
and the resulting degradation of Yellowstone and the animals and birds
that live there. More, the Bush administration has spent a great deal of
our tax money to aid in the continuation of the ongoing destruction of the
Yellowstone ecosystem and environment.
The Bush
administration and its Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton have the
environmental ethics and sensibilities of a two-stroke engine.
As
mentioned, Yellowstone is our National Park, but in the Bush
leagues it makes a certain perverted kind of sense to waste our tax
money to destroy it. I refer, of course, to the $2.4 million the Bush
administration recently spent on an unnecessary second study to learn that
the National Park Service was justified in its intention to phase out
snowmobiles from Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks by 2004, as a
first study had also determined was the right thing to do. But the Bush
administration, and everybody else who was aware of the first study,
already knew that. The first study, five years in the making, concluded
that because of the pollution they spread, the noise they generate, and
the wildlife they harass, displace and sometimes drive to exhaustion and
death, concluded that snowmobiles don’t belong in national parks. Anyone
who has been to West Yellowstone on a winter weekend during the past
several years knows that. In just three months each winter some 66,000
snowmobiles enter Yellowstone. Though the numbers of automobiles in summer
are far more, snowmobiles account for 68 percent of the total carbon
monoxide released into the park and 90 percent of total hydrocarbon
emissions.
Snowmobiles
need to be banned from Yellowstone, Grand Teton and all the other National
Parks. All the science, a distinguished panel of biologists who thoroughly
studied the issue, common sense, the physical senses of anyone who has
been to West Yellowstone in winter and all the animals in Yellowstone say
so. Snowmobiles as recreational toys do not belong in the National Parks.
It’s that simple.
However,
the Bush administration is not impressed with science, the environment,
the overwhelming support for a snowmobile ban from people who have
commented on this issue at both a regional and national level, the effects
of snowmobiles on winter stressed animals or the clouds of unhealthy blue
air from snowmobile exhaust fumes at the park gates. The latter, a
combination of dangerous to breathe levels of benzene, formaldehyde,
carbon monoxide and other particulates, have for years been causing
nausea, headaches, sore throats, dizziness and fatigue among Yellowstone
rangers working at the west entrance and patrolling the 30 mile corridor
to Old Faithful geyser. To protect their health, park rangers this year
began wearing gas masks on the job, a move snowmobile enthusiasts term
"grandstanding."
But taking
care of personal health is not grandstanding. One park ranger was quoted
in Sports Illustrated as saying that before he started wearing a
respirator to work, "it would be rare that I would go home without a
headache or some signs of dizziness. Now I have the energy to go
backpacking or cross-country skiing." If the air you breathe at work
sends you home with nausea and headaches and not enough personal energy to
enjoy your life, something is wrong with that environment. If that
environment is Yellowstone, the nausea extends all the way to Washington
D.C.
Energy, of
course, is exactly the issue. Not the human energy that comes from living
well, breathing good air, exercising regularly in a clean environment
like, for instance, a National Park where untrammeled nature could
rejuvenate a spirit and a mind could hear itself think. No, not that. The
energy that is the issue is the sort that leaves clouds of benzene,
formaldehyde, carbon monoxide and other unpleasant and unhealthy
substances floating in the air for all without respirators to breathe,
and, eventually, to work their way into the water table and web of
Yellowstone life. The energy is that of the oil industry and one of its
satellites, The International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association, which,
along with the state governments of Idaho and Wyoming, pressured the Bush
administration to overturn his predecessors plan to phase snowmobiles out
of national parks by 2003-04. Bush, with the help of Vice-president Dick
Cheney, of course, allowed the oil industry to write the nation’s energy
policy behind closed doors. Even (or, perhaps, especially) in the wake of
Enron, the Bush administration won’t reveal how the policy was reached
or who the advisors were. Many suspect special interests. If so, it’s
nauseous.
The Bush
administration has ordered this second environmental impact study. By law,
this includes public comment. Anyone who wishes to comment or learn more
can write: Winter Use Draft SEIS Comments, Grand Teton and Yellowstone
National Parks, P.O. Box 352, Moose, WY 83012.
Meanwhile,
Yellowstone in winter continues to be a nauseous and nauseating
environmental disaster.