JACKSON, Wyo. — While oversnow travel in Yellowstone National Park (YNP) has inspired ongoing debate for almost three-quarters of a century, the current status of winter use highlights the efforts to minimize impact.
Kevin Taylor, lead guide with Wildlife Expeditions who’s been guiding winters in YNP for decades, emphasizes that the extensive work historically put into regulating and limiting oversnow vehicles (OSVs) in the Park has substantially lessened noise and exhaust pollution, overuse and pressures on wildlife in the winter.
“I think it’s worth talking about how it’s a lot better now than it was 20-plus years ago,” Taylor shares with Buckrail. “It’s not without zero impact…but travel in the wintertime is very limited and there are a lot of rules in place to decrease the impact.”
Taylor highlights in particular how the requirement for guides ensures visitors are experiencing the park safely and ethically. According to Taylor, facilitating an educational experience, in addition to requiring all snowmobiles and snowcoaches be the best available technology (BAT), has been significant in decreasing winter harm to the ecological landscape.
“I’ve talked to rangers who worked in wintertime before those changes were implemented,” Taylor says. “They used to write a lot of tickets, but these days they have guides making sure people are following the rules.”
Taylor emphasizes that allowing people to see Yellowstone in the winter offers a meaningful experience that differs from summer and helps invest more people in caring about preserving the area. He says guests that he’s guided comment frequently on the specialness of the solitude that winter provides due to the smaller number of daily visitors.
Taylor says this solitude provides an intimate experience for wildlife watching, a huge part of what gives visitors the ability to create a deeper connection to Yellowstone. In winter, wildlife come out of the high country and concentrate in the valleys where there’s less snow, and many species become more visible to viewers. Wildlife can also be seen at all times of the day, since there’s no midday heat to avoid.
The cold weather also brings unique condensed water clouds over the hydrothermal areas.
“I look at wintertime like it adds a whole other layer of wildness to this place.”
Kevin Taylor
“The landscape just looks so different and beautifully harsh,” Taylor says. “I look at wintertime like it adds a whole other layer of wildness to this place.”
Taylor points out that the vast majority of people who visit YNP come in the summer, when the Park doesn’t require limits or guides for visitors. There are also no emission or sound requirements on summer vehicles.
According to YNP’s Public Affairs Office, the reason there’s such high regulation in the winter stems from the National Park Service’s Regulation 36 CFR 2.18, which states a special rule must be made authorizing snowmobiles in any national park where they are otherwise prohibited. In other words, YNP’s winter use policy developed around the need to designate a specific rule allowing public access into the Park in winter, since the default NPS policy is prohibiting snowmobiles. This is known as the “closed unless open rule.”
“Without a specific rule, oversnow vehicles would be prohibited from entering Yellowstone,” YNP’s Public Affairs Office tells Buckrail. “There is not a similar requirement that we undergo when it comes to similar rulemaking for summer visitation.”
YNP’s Public Affairs Office says that designating a summer rule, or set of requirements, has not been necessary because it is not needed to allow people to physically visit the park. Visitor Use studies conducted in 2016 and 2018 are being used to inform summer decisions the park could make going forward, and YNP’s Public Affairs Office says preserving and protecting the Park in light of increasing summer visitation and impact is a high priority.
