By Jon Bilman

In what is turning into a showdown of Old West proportions, the National Park Service last week gave the nod to a management plan that will put the kibosh on snowmobiles in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and instead require winter visitors to access the parks with cleaner, quieter snow coaches.

The announcement, made with the recommendation of the Environmental Protection Agency, now has sledheads pitted against greenies, bug riders vs. slat rats. Conservative politicians in Wyoming, Montana and Idaho are crying constitutional foul while environmental groups cheer the announcement, claiming its high time our national parks stopped being amusement parks. But the new recommendation may be a matter of enforcing laws already on the books.

The National Park Service Organic Act of 1916 required superintendents to conserve wildlife and scenery and "leave them unimpaired for the future generation." Bison that walk out of the park on snowmobile trails have been shot in Montana. The Clean Air Act requires the parks maintain their Class I air status. On some days air pollution in Yellowstone has been measured to be as poor as that of Los Angeles and Denver.

Though far more people visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks in the summertime, snowmobiles account for most of the parks total air pollution. Cars outnumber snowmobiles 16 to 1, but the snowmobiles inefficient two-cycle engines release up to one-third of their fuel unburned and contribute 68 percent of Yellowstones carbon monoxide and 90 percent of hydrocarbon pollutants. The drone of hundreds of two-stroke engines rivals a large airport and drowns out the natural sounds of the park.

Viki Eggers of the BlueRibbon Coalition, a motorized off-road industry lobby group based in Pocatello, Idaho, is concerned that this will be a bellwether decision, "We certainly see this as a move to close all public lands to snowmobiles," she says. "Do we think theyll be successful? No. The off-road recreation community is a sleeping giant. This kind of closure agenda will be met with mighty opposition. Public lands must remain available for all of us, not just those who prefer to recreate under their own power."

The pro-wildlife outfit Fund for Animals, though they agree that this is a step in the right direction, doesn't think the new Park Service recommendation goes far enough. FFAs main concern is the wildlife, and bison may still use groomed snow coach roads to walk out of the park. Fund for Animals would like to see Yellowstone closed cold turkey to winter visitors.

That degree of closure isn't likely, but the era of Yellowstone as a motorized Disneyland is likely over. Meanwhile, its nearing high noon for national forest rangers, who face the updating of management plans in order to deal with the stresses of the explosion in horsepowered recreation that has surpassed logging and mining in damage done to many public lands outside national park jurisdiction.

Photos: Jeremy Woodhouse; Donovan Reese