Snowmobile Plan Challenged to Protect Wildlife, Quiet Recreation

Snowlands Network, Winter Wildlands Alliance and the Center for Biological Diversity today filed a lawsuit challenging
the California Department of Parks and Recreation's 10-year plan to
fund clearing and grooming for snowmobile trails on 11 national forests
each winter. The environmental review of the "Over Snow Vehicle
Program," which was approved Dec. 20, did not adequately address impacts
to wildlife, air or water quality, or conflicts with quiet winter
recreation.

"The program allows snowmobiles in areas that would
otherwise remain inaccessible to these noisy and polluting activities,"
said Lisa Belenky, a senior attorney with the Center. "Many imperiled
species are affected, including the Sierra Nevada red fox, American
pika, bighorn sheep and wolverine. The state should be doing more to protect wildlife in these areas during the critical winter months."

The OSV program shapes winter recreation on national
forests, promoting motorized over nonmotorized recreation. Winter
recreation in the snow-covered forests depends on access from plowed
trailheads; more than 80 percent of the official winter-recreation
trailheads in California national forests are dominated by motorized
recreation.

Backcountry skiing and snowshoeing are two of the
fastest-growing winter sports in America and are both largely
incompatible with snowmobile recreation. The OSV program's promotion of
snowmobiling effectively removes substantial areas of the national
forest from use for sports like skiing and snowshoeing. Very few areas
in California are protected for clean, quiet human-powered winter
recreation, and nonmotorized users are increasingly crowded into those
areas to escape the air pollution and noise from snowmobiles. Yet all
activities can be accommodated if appropriate measures are taken to
reduce user conflicts and protect wildlife, plants and water quality.

"The experience of crossing a pristine and quiet winter
landscape has to be experienced to be fully appreciated," said Marcus
Libkind, Snowlands' chairman and author of guidebooks on ski touring in
California. "The emergence of snowshoeing as a mainstream sport is now
bringing hundreds of thousands of new quiet users onto the winter
landscape. This trend should be supported by the state and its
communities, among other things as a valuable contributor to the tourist
economy. Skiing, snowshoeing and snowmobiling can all exist on our
national forests, but the state needs to encourage clean and quiet
human-powered recreation by the creation of safe areas for these winter
activities."

"The national forest lands are intended to be
multiple-use," said Mark Menlove, executive director of Winter Wildlands
Alliance. "However, multiple-use does not mean all uses in all places.
Indeed, it means the opposite. It means that low-impact uses such as
skiing and snowshoeing are protected and insulated from higher-impact
uses such as snowmobiling. This concept of multiple-use is well
established, and it is disingenuous when the snowmobile community
asserts otherwise. Multiple-use does not mean all areas open to all
uses, it means reasonable use is made available to everyone."