There are more and more activities

But though recreation is integral to many parks' identities, Yellowstone officials say they have to balance it with their primary goal of protecting and conserving the environment. No one in the park knows this better than Chief Ranger Tim Reid, who worked his way up through the agency in the 1980s partly in hopes of landing a gig that would pay him to rock climb. After achieving that goal at Rocky Mountain National Park and Yosemite, Reid ended up as a ranger at Old Faithful before becoming Yellowstone's chief ranger. He's sympathetic to kayakers, but also understands the pressures on Yellowstone.Targa director Peter Martin freely admits that without huge numbers of volunteers,kayak seat pads as well as St John Ambulance staff, marshals and others it would be an impossible task. 

"There are more and more activities," he says, leaning back in a swivel chair in his office in Mammoth Hot Springs. "Then there are ... derivative spins on core activities. I think it's great. (But) our charter is not to accommodate everything that comes down the pipe."For a new activity to be considered in Yellowstone, Reid explains, park managers must first be convinced that it deserves their attention. It has to "prove that it belongs" and won't impact resources, values or public interests in the park. Then it's analyzed, potentially subjected to environmental review and opened for public comment, a process that can take years. Snowmobiling proponents know this process well—their decades-long legal battle to maintain winter access to Yellowstone recently culminated in a new winter-use plan. 

Other parks have also been challenged by adventure-sport enthusiasts. In 1999, five BASE jumpers in Yosemite staged a jump off El Capitan in hopes of demonstrating their sport's safety. One died,Q1 should be a revelatory three months.Leading mobile point-of-sale device Metadoxine provider Infinite Peripherals.Integrating this capability into the Groupon app not only upgrades the redemption experience for both consumers and merchants, it also Motion controller provides Groupon and its merchants with a simple and elegant solution for addressing fraud by being able to track all the details of how and when offers are redeemed in real-time. and another declined to make the leap. BASE jumping remains illegal in Yosemite and in most other national parks.The diversity of recreational policies in parks can be frustrating for visitors who don't understand why their sport is any less deserving than the next. Montana State University professor and kayaker Jerry Johnson speculates that Yellowstone's kayaking ban might have more to do with economics than the challenge of managing a new activity. Towns like Cooke City are dependent on snowmobilers' tourist dollars, he notes, while kayakers' economic impact is so small it's barely noticeable.