After attending the "Shut Out of Yellowstone" Forum Thursday night, I have the following observations.
Attendance
The turnout by the public was wonderful. I estimate 500-600 people attended the meeting
Thursday night. This made a huge visual impression.
The Prep and Panelists
Nice preparation and marketing of the event by the event leaders Carol Armstrong and Tonia Grdina. The
panelists did a wonderful job with
their comments. Al Simpson delivering the perfect "Al speech" to set the tone. Funny, conciliatory, insiteful,
biting. Tough act to follow. His son Colin matched it though with a lawyer-like surgical destruction of
park logic and a resolution to keep the gate open signed by every Wyoming lawmaker.
Suzanne Lewis
Park Superintendent Suzanne Lewis is a mixed bag. You want to love her and you want to hate her.
We gave her and some Yellowstone staff members a private trolley tour several years ago. She makes a
positive impression as a person. She's friendly, energetic, charismatic, laughs easily and appears
to be a good listener. She's been helpful with other Cody issues like east gate summer construction
schedules and how those schedules are shared with the public. So you want to maintain a good
relationship with her.
But she's also totally non-committal to our Sylvan Pass closure complaints and claims she is just another cog in the system who doesn't have much power. She says her regional boss will be making the final decision on whether the east gate closes to motorized vehicles during the winter. Yet she runs the park, so you know her recommendations will carry weight with her superiors. And she has openly admitted she has recommended closing Sylvan Pass to motorized vehicles in winter.
Which does not show a similar desire to maintain a good relationship with Cody. She knows access to that east gate is a critical issue to us. If the problem is avalanche safety or lack of money, why didn't Suzanne come to us and ask for help coming up with solutions for those issues? If she was truly interested in maintaining our relationship, this is the course she would have chosen.
But instead, Suzanne skipped right to recommending the closing of the gate. Which is disappointing, illogical, severe and like dropping a nuclear bomb on our relationship. Now that closure is the "preferred alternative" in the winter-use draft document, recommended by the Park Superindent herself, and that train is rolling along with all the momentum of the federal bureaucracy. Despite nearly 100% opposition by the Cody, Park County and Wyoming population. This is an uphill battle that we could easily lose. At the least, if we win and the gate stays open, her decision has caused us to invest thousands of man-hours fighting just to maintain the status quo.
So we need to warily view our relationship with her as we would a tiger -- she's cute, she occasionally rubs up against our leg -- but she just tried to eat us alive with no prior warning. So let's not pretend our "relationship" is all rainbows and butterflies. Lets call a spade a spade. I see her as a quality human being who made a really rotten decision. And continues to embrace it. And that loses my respect. Which makes me un-eager to invest any significant time or effort into maintaining a relationship that is not a two-way street.
Other Points
Suzanne will soon leave Yellowstone as all park superintendents eventually do. And we'll have to
start over with a new park leader. So there goes the relationship anyway.
If the park is charged with maintaining and protecting cultural resources, they just forced the closing of a giant one -- Pahaska Teepee. The constantly changing winter use rules and misguided helicopter avalanche control process forced Bob Coe to shut the place down until summer due to lack of business. Of course you know that Buffalo Bill Cody built the place. That makes Pahaska a historic and cultural relic that should be preserved and open to the public. Buffalo Bill personally blazed the trail to Yellowstone, lobbied the federal government to open the gate and then donated $50,000 of his own money to help build the road to the east gate. That makes the entire Northfork and east gate a cultural resource that needs to be maintained and kept accessible to the public.
Why are we working so hard to just maintain the status quo? Why not fight the park to plow all roads in the park, all winter, and keep the park open to cars year-round? Let the park spend thousands of man-hours defending OUR actions. Let's turn the tables. Let's go on the offensive. I'm thinking visitation would soar which would generate lots more income for the park and the gateway communities while giving more people access to the winter beauty of Yellowstone. If we can send a man to the moon, we can send a man to the snowplow.
If money is the issue, let's raise park entrance fees and earmark the increase for access and plowing issues. $5 per car should raise about $5 million a year. That would easily pay for east gate avalanche control, plowing the Beartooth Highway and the extra could go to plowing the rest of the park roads to keep them open to cars year-round. If these global warming advocates are right, there will be less snow to plow every year anyway.
Fighting the government to keep what we have has to be the least enjoyable and most unproductive activity ever invented. When you multiply attendance at that meeting by the length of the meeting we're looking at 1500+ hours that we'll never get back. Imagine what productive things we could have created with that time instead!
A recording of the comments made at the meeting will be submitted as public comments to influence the
decision. But personal written letters will also greatly help. You can write your comments to:
Winter Use Plan
PO Box 168
Yellowstone National Park, WY 82190