Article by Allen Best
Public Lands – April 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
FORMER MONTANA CONGRESSMAN Pat Williams was talking about Yellowstone National Park and snowmobiles, but he could have been talking about public lands anywhere.
“Have you ever driven a snowmobile into Yellowstone’s wonders?” In many ways “it is a delight,” he said.
Yet it is also a “symbolic dichotomy of our times in the Rocky Mountain West,” he said: With exhausts fouling the air so intensely that entry-gate attendants are forced to wear masks, and noise that can be heard five miles away from roads, the natural wonders themselves are turned into an “unsightly sideshow” to the procession of snowmobiles.
In a February conference at the University of Colorado-Boulder called “Silence of the Lands,” Williams and other speakers addressed the increasingly controversial issue of noise in our national parks and in other public lands. Most spoke to the need for compromise and dialogue, but also urged committing to what Williams called the “principle of precaution.”
We are, he said, losing the wilderness of the lands. Increasingly, “noise is slicing through the quiet of our Outback.”
At times, the debate about noise threatens to drown out the noise itself. Williams recalled that in the 1980s he introduced legislation in Congress proposing to treat helicopter tour operators that buzzed over Glacier National Park as park concessionaires. Businesses that make their income from park resources, he reasoned, should be subject to control by the National Park Service.
Never did he expect such a reaction, a cacophony of protest.
Similarly, when a law called the 1987 National Parks Overflights Act was passed, regulating flights over the Grand Canyon, tour operators warned it would put them out of business. In fact, the number of air tours has doubled.
Ultimately, noise must be at least muffled, he suggested, because the overwhelming opinion is to preserve environmental quality, even if Washington D.C. drags its feet. “If you don’t believe that money doesn’t buy influence in Washington D.C., you are clinically naïve — so naïve there is no treatment for it,” he said.
Williams proposes that the National Park Service be the lead agency for decisions involving noise affecting parks and monuments, and that decisions should be made on a park-by-park basis. Further, gateway communities must recognize that they are there because of the parks, and not the other way around.
And, as in Glacier, those businesses depending on natural resources of the parks, including the air space, should be considered concessionaires.
ALSO SPEAKING was Dave Chevalier, of Blue Hawaii Helicopters, which flies people to the volcanic craters. “We fly people to places they would not otherwise get to,” he said, characterizing the experience as a “flying classroom.” His flights, he said, have even reduced long-time Hawaiians to tears of joy brought on by seeing the extraordinary sights he provides. But he also recognizes that, in places, the noise is unwelcome, and even inappropriate.
“What we really need are quieter aircraft,” he said. Chevalier thinks the Federal Aviation Administration should provide a definition of quiet technology.
Bill Dart, national public lands coördinator for the Blue Ribbon Coalition, an advocacy group for motorized recreation, argued for the relativity of noise. “What is music to us is a horrible racket to another,” he said. “It’s subjective.” But without noise, Dart said, people wouldn’t be able to see the national parks. Manufacturers of snowmobiles are trying to reduce the noise from snowmobiles, motorcycles, and other recreational vehicles, he added. To that end, he called the Environmental Protection Agency standards a major incentive.
Not all speakers agreed that the issue boils down to perfecting technology. Both National Park Service and U.S. Forest Service representatives argued that it really comes down to values, or in other words: it’s about expectations.
“I don’t think it’s about hard sciences,” said Rick Cables, regional forester for the Southern Rockies. “I think it’s about social sciences.” Cables said he expects that in several decades the pendulum will swing toward a more primitive form of recreation on public lands. Yet, he said, it will never be an absolute.
Another perspective on noise came from Kathy Arehart, a professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at the University of Colorado. She explained that noise, can cause stress, but if people are warned to expect noise, they object less or not at all.
An argument against the idea that noise is a subjective issue came from Bernie Krauss, author of Wild Soundscapes. He has spent 30 years studying the “biophony” of creatures, which is the way they make sounds relative to one another.
WITH SOUND RECORDINGS taken at Mono Lake, Calif. and in the Amazon and plotted onto graphs, he demonstrated how creatures make noise a little like players in a symphony do. “Every habitat has its own unique voice print,” he explained, and then demonstrated how even something as relatively innocuous as a jet plane flying overhead interrupts that biophony. Krauss also observed something similar at Yellowstone.
Krauss measured passing two-stroke and four- stroke snowmobiles, but concluded that the supposedly quieter four-stroke engines are nearly as loud, 77 decibels in his test, compared to 80.3 decibels. By comparison, a conversation is measured at 60, and a bulldozer at 105.
In conclusion, Krauss zeroed in on the way we experience public lands. Typically, we talk about seeing things. “But I want to hear. I want to hear the wind in the trees. I want to hear the wind that John Muir talked about when he said he knew where he was by the sound of the wind.”
Snowmobiles are “great fun, but they don’t belong in the park,” he said. However, he admitted that he had used a snowmobile to get his recording devices into Yellowstone.
Allen Best keeps his muffer in good repair as he travels between Eagle and Denver, while exploring the back-country in between.
Quiet Use Coalition
A group called the Quiet Use Coalition was formed in 1997 “to promote quiet, ecologically sound means of non-motorized recreation on our public lands and waters.” Based in Buena Vista, it seems to be most active in affairs involving the Upper Arkansas Valley.
In a message posted at the group’s website, president Dennis Claveau explains that the group’s primary concern is the proliferation of personal motorized recreational vehicles.
“Back 45 years ago, only a few thousand off-road vehicles existed in the country,” he says. “Today, these vehicles number in the millions, and are growing by the thousands daily. Sharing trails was realistic in the Old Days, while today, separate areas — not just separate trails — make more sense.”
The group calls for “quiet use areas,” which aren’t necessarily the same as wilderness areas. Mot wilderness is above 10,000 feet, members note. But they claim that 86 percent of forest users have quiet activities. Those seking motorized back-country recreation area only 10 percent of total forest visitors, yet motorized recreation claims a larger amount of land for its use.