Judge tells the Blue Ribbon Coalition and industry friends to bite it

Judge Refuses Yellowstone Snowmobile Stay

Dec 23, 4:44 PM (ET)

By JOHN HEILPRIN


WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge refused to grant a temporary
reprieve Tuesday from his order that the National Park Service must
revive a plan scrapped by the Bush administration to ban snowmobiles
from Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

Denying a request that he stay his order from last week, U.S. District
Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected arguments by the Michigan-based
International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association and the Idaho-based
BlueRibbon Coalition, which promotes motorized recreation.

The two groups had intervened in the case, saying the judge's ruling
would prevent thousands of visitors from seeing Yellowstone and would
devastate the local economies. They argued the timing just before the
start of the winter season for snowmobiling also would lead to chaos
in the parks.

Sullivan said he saw no new evidence to persuade him to change his
conclusion that the Bush administration was wrong to set aside a
Clinton administration plan to ban snowmobiles in favor of
less-polluting mass-transit snow coaches.


Staying his order now "would be tantamount to the court blinking (at)
reality," Sullivan wrote.

The judge said "any economic or emotional harm to those who made plans
to visit the park falls squarely on the defendants' shoulders," he
said, referring to the Interior Department.

The Interior Department's National Park Service and business owners
had planned for the season under rules it approved this year and had
expected to put into effect. Those would have limited the number and
types of snowmobiles allowed in the parks. Sullivan ordered the Park
Service to revert to the Clinton-era plan for a gradual phaseout, in
favor of the mass-transit snow coaches.

It also means this could be the last season for snowmobiles in the
parks; snowmobiling has been allowed for 40 years