Details on Yellowstone winter use? Stay tuned

If you're wanting details on the new options being considered for winter recreation in Yellowstone National Park, you'll have to wait for a few more days.

On Tuesday, the Park Service announced that it's seeking comments from the public on a range of options for regulating snowmobile, snowcoach and other winter traffic in the future.

The press release was fairly general in describing the six alternatives officials are considering, but said more information could be found online at http://parkplanning.nps.gov/yell.

The problem? The site currently has no information about the new options.

Here's the explanation from Yellowstone park spokesman Al Nash:

The 30-day public comment period doesn't officially begin until the Park Service publishes a notice in the Federal Register, a kind of daily government newspaper.

"We had thought that might be today (Friday), now it's going to be the middle of the week," Nash said. He's guessing the notice will go in the Wednesday, Feb. 8, edition of the Federal Register.

At that point, "there will be some materials posted to that (parkplanning.nps.gov/yell) website," Nash said.

The press release went out Tuesday instead of later because open houses on the winter use alternatives are coming right up, he said.

"We wanted to get the word out to people so they could put the public meetings on their schedule," Nash said.

Indeed, the Cody event -- the first of four such meetings in the region -- is slated for 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 13 at the Holiday Inn. Waiting for the (tentative) Feb. 8 publication in the Federal Register would have meant less than a week of notice, versus the nearly two weeks that Tuesday's announcement gave.

"I realize we ended up announcing this in a little different fashion than we typically do," Nash added.

The revised options under consideration include ending snowmobiling in the park and closing Sylvan Pass to winter travel, leaving daily limits at the current 318 sleds/78 snowcoaches threshold or setting limits based on the number of “sound events” created by the traffic, rather than on specific numbers of machines.

The Park Service decided to re-examine its options after the public found fault with the preferred plan managers released last year.

Now, Yellowstone managers are seeking more feedback from the public with a "scoping" period on the new alternatives.

"What scoping is all about is, 'We have some ideas, we need some more from you,'" Nash said.