Palin backed snowmobiles in parks
from The Swamp by Andy Zajac
By Andrew Zajac
A federal court in Washington earlier this week handed conservationists a big win by reinstating tighter limits on snowmobiling in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway connecting them.
While it appears that she's been silent on the issue of snowmobiling in Alaska's sprawling national parks as governor, Sarah Palin took a more supportive attitude toward it when she served as mayor of Wasilla.
In 1998, Mayor Palin backed a City of Wasilla resolution calling for a resumption of snowmobiling within the two-million acre Mt. McKinley National Park, opposing what at the time was a temporary ban on the activity imposed by the National Park Service.
Read the resolution here: Palin snowmobiles
That ban is still in place, according to a National Park Service web site.
Palin might be excused for being partial to the snowmobile, or the snowmachine as aficionados call it, since husband Todd Palin is a champion racer.
On the other hand, Palin appears to be of the aggressive-use-of-the-land school of the outdoors. Among other resolutions she supported was one to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, a position she holds to this day and which puts her at odds with her Republican running mate, Arizona Sen. John McCain.
Palin ANWR
Ten-year-old positions taken when a politician on the national stage was a local office-holder aren't the best predictors of future behavior. After all, what public official hasn't changed her mind, evolved or made a political calculation to do B instead of A?
But Palin's only been governor for 20 months, so her decade on the Wasilla city council and in the mayor's office offers the lengthiest record available to glean clues on how she might behave as vice president.
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/palin_backed_snowmobiles_in_pa.html