ARCTIC CATS AND BUFFALO

By RICHARD WOODBURY/BOZEMAN

John and Susan Purcell toured Yellowstone this winter the new, noisy way--by snowmobile. And like thousands of visitors who clamber onto winter scooters every week to explore America's oldest national park, they can't get over those close encounters with wild elk, moose, trumpeter swans, coyotes and, closest of all, buffalo. The huge, hairy beasts--some weighing as much as a Volkswagen--ambled right down the middle of the road, often forcing drivers to hit their brakes to avoid a meaty collision. "We got within 5 ft. of them!" says an excited John Purcell. "I've never seen so many bison."

And that's a problem--as much for the bison as for the snowmobilers. In a desperate search for food beneath 4-ft.-deep snow, the animals are using routes that are maintained for the snowmobilers to make their way to forage areas at the park's perimeter and on into Montana. That state's livestock agents, fearful that the animals will infect beef cattle with a disease called brucellosis, are shipping the animals to slaughterhouses as soon as they cross the border. Or sometimes, with the help of park employees, shooting them on the spot.

The kill count, which already exceeds 1,000 this year, has outraged animal lovers and the local Native American tribes--some of whom showed up on the steps of the U.S. Capitol last week to protest the slaughter. Many are blaming Yellowstone's snowmobiling tourists for the massacre. By opening the park to unrestricted numbers of the machines, they say, and meticulously grading and packing the deep snow on the roads to accommodate riders, the Park Service has inadvertently made it easier for the bison to move around in search of food, thus increasing their survival rate and boosting their population (from 400 in 1970 to 3,500 last fall). Now the matter has come to a head. Ice and snowdrifts piled high by the fiercest winter weather in 50 years have buried the buffalo's usual feeding grounds and driven the starving animals to remote ranges. Warns Mary Meagher, a wildlife biologist at the park: "The buffalo herds are heading for a crash."

If so, it would be another strike against those Arctic Cats, Polaris Indys, Mountain Maxes and Skidoo Formula 500s--machines whose booming popularity seems to be matched only by the growing number of people who hate them. Antisnowmobilers complain that the motorized sleds, with their primitive but powerful two-cycle engines, are loud, dirty and dangerous and that they intrude on quieter users of public lands. Most national parks tightly restrict their use; California's Yosemite and Montana's Glacier national parks prohibit them outright.

The issue is most contentious at Yellowstone, whose 190 miles of carefully groomed roads make for unsurpassed winter touring. A busy weekend will see 2,000 snowmobilers buzzing the approaches to Old Faithful, their engines filling the subzero air with a cacophony of chain-saw whines and casting a blue haze against the stands of lodgepole pines. "We are turning a national park into a national playground," complains D.J. Schubert, a biologist for the Fund for Animals, which is threatening to sue the Interior Department.

Environmentalists complain that too many snowmobilers ride roughshod over park rules. Rangers concede they are hard-pressed, even with radar guns, to enforce the 45-m.p.h. speed limit or keep hot-doggers from tearing off roads and into the underbrush. "Snowmobiles bring out the youth in people," says district ranger Bob Seibert. "Many of these riders can't seem to resist running up and down the hillsides."

But it's hard to fight a sport that boasts 1.3 million free-spending enthusiasts and pumps $4 billion a year into the U.S. economy--much of it into communities that might otherwise be forced into economic hibernation. According to a new University of Maine study, snowmobilers bring nearly twice as much revenue to that state as do skiers. "Without snowmobiling, this town would be nothing," says Glen Loomis, mayor of West Yellowstone, Montana, which calls itself, apparently without irony, the world's capital of snowmobiling.

On a typical day in West Yellowstone, the early-morning stillness is broken by the roar of hundreds of snowmobiles revving up outside motel rooms. In shops, buyers paw over machines that cost $5,500 and up, reach speeds of 100 m.p.h. and come with such amenities as hand and thumb warmers, electric starters and reverse gears. Also available: Darth Vader-type helmets ($250) and his-and-her leather driving outfits ($1,000 apiece).

At the park's west gate the engine exhaust is so thick that rangers have coated the toll booths with Plexiglas and installed a fresh-air pumping system. "The fumes are horrible," says ranger Seibert. "You shouldn't have to wear earplugs when you come to the park." As the number of snowmobilers and the attendant problems mount, Yellowstone's management is looking at its options, ranging from setting exhaust limits to imposing a snowmobile ban, moves that would bring howls of protest almost as loud as the machines themselves. Sighs park information officer Marsha Karle: "We're trying to control an industry that doesn't want to be controlled."

Meanwhile, the plight of Yellowstone's buffalo only gets worse. As riflemen dispatched more than 50 animals last week, hundreds of others, weak from hunger, lumbered through the thick drifts trying to stave off starvation by chewing on whatever bark and pine needles they could reach. Some good will is coming from the situation, however. Meat from the slain animals, properly treated, is being distributed to needy Indians and other groups.