Ruling to allow snowmobiling on Voyageurs bays affirmed.
A three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has backed a lower court ruling that the National Park Service acted properly in 2001 when it opened 11 bays in Voyageurs National Park to snowmobiling.
The appeals court ruling, released today, backs the July 2003 decision by Federal District Judge Donovan Frank that keeps frozen bays on Rainy, Kabetogama, Sand Point and Namakan Lakes open to winter activities.
The decision means the bays will remain open to snowmobiling unless the Park Service finds new evidence that winter activities damage wolves or other wildlife.
While away from the most-used trails and not heavily traveled in winter, access to the bays has become a battleground in recent years in the ongoing debate over how much of the park should be open to motorized recreation -- and over how much leeway each park has in management of land use.
"I'm very happy that the appeals court has agreed that we had the authority to reopen the bays. This has been a long effort," said Voyageurs superintendent Barbara West.
The Park Service has said there was no biological reason to keep the bays closed. But environmental groups sued, saying the Park Service was ignoring problems with wolf survival in the 218,000-acre park and that the Park Service had skirted environmental review laws.
The Appeals Court disagreed.
"In sum, we find the Park Service, in electing not to close 11 bays to snowmobiling, appropriately exercised its discretionary authority under federal law," the appeals court decision concluded.
Created by Congress in 1975, Voyageurs is one of few national parks that allow snowmobiling by its charter. Most of the 218,000-acre park's big lakes are open to snowmobiles, and several overland trails connect the lakes. Snowmobiling is generally not allowed in the park's interior forests, however.
Rick Duncan and Brian O'Neil, Minneapolis attorneys for environmental groups in the case, said the courts are allowing the Park Service to ignore the National Environmental Policy Act.
"We think it's bad for the park. We just hope this doesn't set a precedent... or it essentially invalidates a lot of federal environmental law," Duncan said.
Duncan said no decision had been made on whether to appeal the decision to the full court of appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Park Service originally closed 17 bays in 1992 because it was believed wolves used the frozen areas to prey on deer. Snowmobilers sued to block the closures, but in 1996 a federal district court judge, and later the U.S. Court of Appeals, affirmed the park's authority to close the bays.
The Park Service opened six of the bays in 1996. Subsequent research showed wolves generally were not using the bays and that the bays weren't critical habitat for the roughly 40 wolves that regularly use the park. Based on that information, West reopened the final 11 bays in late 2001.
But the Voyageurs National Park Association and other groups filed suit, contending the study was incomplete and that wolves may indeed need undisturbed lake bays to pursue game and avoid people. Their suit noted that nine of the 11 wolves fitted with radio collars for the study died or disappeared.
