The net effect of this renewed enforcement effort will be the significant reduction of recreational snowmobiling in most units of the System.
Snowmobiles are noisy, antiquated machines that are no longer welcome in our national parks.
The renewed enforcement effort on snowmobiling was prompted by a rulemaking petition that the Department of the Interior received last year from the Bluewater Network and over 60 other environmental organizations in the United States. The rulemaking petition requested that the NPS ban snowmobiling in all units of the Park System. In responding to the Bluewater petition, NPS first sent a questionnaire survey to the 42 units of the Park System that currently allow recreational snowmobiling. The surveys were designed to assess the extent to which affected units of the system had complied with existing Park Service regulations and past Executive Orders regulating snowmobile use. The surveys graphically demonstrated that years of inattention to our own regulatory standards on snowmobiles generated the problem we have before us today.