Guest Editorial for week of Nov. 21

To keep employees at the gates to Yellowstone National Park breathing this winter, the National Park Service is buying respirators and passing them out. It already pumps fresh air into the enclosed kiosks where they work. We are not making this up.

Snowmobiles that line up, sometimes by the hundreds, to zip through the park in winter are the culprits. The respirators are intended to help the employees, who've been complaining about sore throats, burning eyes, and breathing difficulties. They work in a blue exhaust haze, which seems a reasonable argument for banning these belching beasts. At least it made sense to the Park Service.

In 2000, the National Park Service announced it would phase out snowmobiles from Yellowstone and the Grand Teton National Park to the south as well. But snowmobile manufacturers and the state of Montana, which likes its tourists dollars, went to court. Promising further study, the Bush administration retreated and repealed the ban.

Recently, the Park Service said it had taken another look, and offered four alternatives for public comment. The alternatives included daily caps on the number of snowmobiles and stricter emissions standards. The snowmobile industry called that progress.

When the time comes to put respirators on the buffalo, perhaps somebody in the White House will decide it makes more sense to tell the snowmobile manufacturers to go take a hike.

For too many years, Washington has refused to provide anything close to adequate funding to maintain national park trails, roads, buildings, and important sites. the $5 billion backlog is more than shameful, it is a real threat to the future of the world's greatest park system. Now the feds seem equally unwilling to take even the most obvious measures to keep the parks from resembling an industrial complex or a city thoroughfare -- witness the difficulties in planning to close the Yosemite Valley to traffic.

You want scandals? You got one. If future generations are to enjoy the nation's parks without benefit of masks, efforts to protect them must get more support in Washington, D.C.

The Peoria (Ill.) Journal Star