Wish You Weren’t Here

Human din doesn’t just hurt birding, it hurts birds. Studies in Canada’s boreal forest reveal that near oil and gas rigs a disproportionate number of male birds fail to establish territories and are less successful in attracting mates, and that for those that manage to do both, nesting success is much lower. The Park Service reports that unnatural sounds suppress immune systems, increase stress-related hormones, and drain birds of critically needed energy by forcing them to vocalize louder to attract mates, defend territories, and warn of predators.

Tour flights are just the most pervasiv—not the only or even the most obnoxious—source of park noise pollution. Others include snowmobiles and off-road vehicles and, the clear leader in inappropriateness, jetskis—a.k.a. “personal watercraft” (PWC).

Don Barger—the National Parks Conservation Association’s southeast regional director and a member of the Overflights Advisory Group established by the 2000 legislation—offers this: “As we [the association] were looking at jetskis we went through a lot of machinations until we realized they’re thrill-craft. Riding a jetski is not about getting access to somewhere, and it’s not about the place you’re in. It’s about the craft you’re on. The enjoyment, defined in the Park Service’s organic act, is enjoyment of the resource. With a jetski it’s enjoyment of the jetski.”

“Studies have suggested that PWC sound is different from that of motorboats,” reports the Park Service. “The most important difference is that jetskis continually leave the water. This magnifies their sound impact in two ways. First, minus the muffling effect of the water, the PWC engine’s exhaust can be more than 15 decibels louder than a motorboat. Second, each time the PWC reenters the water, it smacks the surface with an explosive ‘whomp.’ ”

But such features are selling points. Consider this promo offered by Seadoo: “You’ll be digging into turns and beating your friends across the lake with no mercy. . . . It’s like riding a jet powered go-kart. Circle a small island in KART mode. It’ll feel like a high-banked speedway. Ride it like a motocross bike, leaning into liquid turns. Get a face full of water instead of dirt. Do it for an hour or so.”

Whatever can an agency charged with preserving nature “unimpaired” be thinking by welcoming such machines? “Informed delight, not feckless merriment” is how President Clinton’s Park Service director, Roger Kennedy, accurately defined the “enjoyment” mandated by the organic act. Under his leadership the Park Service banned jetskis everywhere save 21 units that could allow them for a two-year grace period during which they were to determine, by rule-making process with public commentary, if jetskis would stay or go. Six park units—including the Cape Lookout, Gulf Islands, and Cumberland Island national seashores—banned them forthwith.

But on April 20, 2001—a year before the grace period was to end and before any unit had finalized a rule—Pat Hooks, the Park Service’s southeast regional director, sent her staff this memo about a discussion she’d just had with the Washington office, now run by Bush appointees: “Effective immediately, there is to be no additional enforcement of the ban on the use of PWC at either [sic] of the three seashores. No public statement need be issued reversing the compendiums or other positions at this time. If asked, the response is to be: We are ‘DELAYING IMPLEMENTATION PENDING FURTHER REVIEW.’ ”

Carrying much of the water for the mechanized recreation industry at the Interior Department has been deputy assistant secretary Paul Hoffman, longtime crony of Vice-President Cheney. As director of the Cody, Wyoming, Chamber of Commerce and the Cody Economic Development Council, Hoffman had spent 12 years whooping it up for snowmobiles, and when the Wilderness Society got him recused from promoting this type of thrill-craft in Yellowstone, he latched on to jetski promotion. At this writing, jetskis are authorized in 13 park units (in many cases against the will of supervisors) and about to be authorized in a 14th.

The Bush administration has been equally successful in undoing its predecessor’s progress at limiting snowmobiles, now authorized in 42 park units. Nowhere is snowmobile use more contentious or inappropriate than in our first and most beloved national park. On November 22, 2000, the Clinton administration issued an environmental-impact statement and record of decision that would phase out snowmobiles in Yellowstone. The Bush administration promptly halted that process, and on November 4, 2004, issued a finding of no significant impact for its preferred alternative of 720 snowmobiles per day—a threefold increase of the number now entering the park. Bill Wade, former superintendent of Shenandoah National Park and now director of the Coalition of National Park Service Retirees, likens this to “shooting skeet in the Sistine Chapel.”

Park rangers at Yellowstone have suffered hearing loss from snowmobiles. The agency’s own data reveal that they imperil such wintering wildlife as bald eagles, trumpeter swans, elk, and bison, and that even the required four-stroke models dominate the soundscape 60 percent to 80 percent of the winter at Old Faithful and 75 percent at Madison Junction.