A great day! Judge REINSTATES CLINTON Yellowstone sled plan!!!!!!!!

Thats right! The Judge decided that Bush ignored science and public
comments, and cancelled his plan!

Then the judge fully reinstated Clionton's science and public opinion
backed plan to phase snowmobiles out of Yellowstone!


A great, GREAT day for all who enjoy the wonders of Yellowstone
national park!

Fantastic news! The Clinton plan STARTS TOMORROW!!!

Happy Holidays!


Most snowmobiles on hold at Yellowstone
Judge orders National Park Service to reverse courseMSNBC staff and
wire reports
Updated: 8:36 p.m. ET Dec. 16, 2003WASHINGTON - The National Park
Service must revive a scrapped plan to ban snowmobiles from
Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, a federal judge ordered
Tuesday, one day before the service had planned to open a winter
season under rules that allowed snowmobiling to continue.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3691981/

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said the Bush administration should
not have set aside a Clinton administration plan that would have
banned snowmobiles in favor of mass-transit snow coaches, which would
reduce pollution in the parks.

The Bush administration dropped that plan and decided instead to allow
limited snowmobiling to continue under rules that allowed only
snowmobiles with quieter and less-polluting engines. The Park Service
was set to start operating under the new rules Wednesday.

Sullivan's ruling does not entirely close the parks to snowmobiling,
however. Instead, he ordered the Park Service to follow the older
rules, which will eventually allow only snow coaches — which carry
groups of winter visitors — in areas where individual snowmobilers
once rode.

A limited number of snowmobilers will be allowed to enter this winter
— about 490 per day in Yellowstone and 50 per day in Grand Teton.

950 snowmobilers a day
The Bush administration plan would have allowed 950 snowmobilers a day
in Yellowstone and 400 in Grand Teton, although most would have had to
ride the less environmentally harmful machines.

The Park Service called the administration plan a balance between its
duty to protect the park and its responsibility to allow the public to
visit and enjoy it.

In a lawsuit, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition of Bozeman, Mont.,
argued that the Park Service had ignored its own studies that show a
ban on snowmobiles and the use of snow coaches would best protect the
park's natural resources.

The group argued that unacceptable pollution and health risks to
workers would have continued even with the new emission and entry
limits on snowmobiles.

But Interior Secretary Gale Norton called the proposed rule "a common
sense solution to years of conflict. This rule allows Yellowstone
employees to closely manage snowmobile use in ways that protect
wildlife and resources while maintaining a quality visitor
experience."

"The plan discounts the extreme and unacceptable options — a complete
ban on snowmobiles versus unrestricted access and continued reliance
on older and polluting technology," she said in a statement this week.

Engine tests
In August, the Park Service asked for comments on two different ways
to test snowmobile emissions and, in the final regulations, chose a
method that was based on tests of entire classes of snowmobile
engines.

The Park Service said more than 90 percent of the nearly 105,000
people who submitted comments on the new rules were against them.
Sacklin said those comments were not within the bounds of the last
phase of the planning process, which aimed to fine-tune the rules.

Snowmobile opponents said the Park Service was ignoring evidence.

"Never before has the National Park Service ... understood so
completely what is needed to protect park resources, only to have
political appointees at the Interior Department order a different
course which they know will harm the park," said Rick Smith, a retired
Park Service official.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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