Sports

SNOWMOBILES UNDER FIRE

FIRST it was Jet Skis. Now environmentalists want snowmobiles banned from the national parks.

”They’re killing our wildlife, ruining our air and water quality, poisoning the health of park rangers exposed to snowmobiles’ carbon monoxide exhaust, and destroying the solitude and peace cherished by other winter visitors,” said Russell Long, executive director of the Bluewater Network, a coalition of groups that filed a petition with the National Park Service last month.

Snowmobiles are permitted in 28 park units, with the heaviest use in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks in Wyoming.

The park service is required by law to respond to the petition, but agency officials had not reviewed it and declined comment as of last week.

Last fall the park service turned down a ban on Jet Skis but proposed regulations limiting their use to 25 recreation and seashore areas.

Separately, the groups are asking the Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to consider new emission and safety standards for snowmobiles.

In Yellowstone alone, some 120,000 snowmobiles use the park each winter and the air around the park’s west entrance, where they congregate, is sometimes thick with blue smoke, said Long. At Old Faithful geyser alone, snowmobiles create more pollution in one weekend than a year’s worth of automobile traffic, says the petition. It also blames the machines for causing bison to leave the park and disturbing other wildlife, including grizzly bears.

Snowmobiles use the same two-stroke engines as Jet Skis and many boats, making them one of the nation’s largest sources of ”unchecked pollution,” the groups say in a letter to the EPA.

U.S. sales of snowmobiles have doubled since 1992 to more than 160,000 units a year, according to the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association.

Snowmobile owners say the machines are accused unfairly of being dangerous and dirty. ”More often than not the facts and figures are twisted,” said Jeff Mausol, a former president of the United Snowmobilers Association. ”They paint the worst-case scenario whenever possible.”

The manufacturers are working on a fuel-injected system that could reduce emissions by 80 percent and make the machine quieter as well, but the motor would still not be as clean as a four-stroke engine. Two-stroke motors are preferred for snowmobiles because they start better in the winter and accelerate more quickly.

”We’re testing so many types of new technology that there’s really nothing we’re leaving untouched,” said Heather Hauschild, spokeswoman for Arctic Cat, one of the two U.S. based manufacturers.