NATIONAL PARKS -- Legislation has been introduced in Congress that would allow paddle-powered watercraft on additional rivers and streams in Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks.

U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., introduced the “Yellowstone and Grand Teton Paddling Act” this month.

The proposal is not necessarily popular.

The proposal gives the National Park Service three years to “promulgate regulations to allow the use of hand-propelled vessels on certain rivers and streams” on Grand Teton, Yellowstone and the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway, which is between the two national parks in northwest Wyoming, according to the Associated Press:

In a statement, Lummis said her bill would erase a federal ban that was enacted in the 1950s.

“I took great care to preserve the discretion of park managers to actually manage paddling as they do any other recreational activity in the parks,” Lummis said. “And to ensure park managers have the time and resources necessary to go through the proper studies and analysis.”

The types of hand-propelled watercraft allowed on waterways in the parks would remain at the discretion of the National Park Service.

She proposed a similar bill last year that caused debate about opening up and managing additional recreational uses in the parks and rifts in conservation circles and within the paddling community.

Her new proposal also drew initial opposition.

Sharon Mader, Grand Teton program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, said in a statement that the new proposal will have “far reaching negative impacts on two of our country’s most iconic national parks.”

Mandating a study of the rivers and streams would be costly, and it would prevent the Park Service from doing its job of managing the parks in the best interests of preserving them for future generations, Mader said.

But advocates for the proposal say the rivers and streams addressed by the bill total less than 5 percent of the 7,500 river miles found in the parks,

“The big complaint last time is that the parks are going to have to study 7,500 miles of river and streams,” Rendezvous River Sports owner Aaron Pruzan told the Jackson Hole News & Guide (http://bit.ly/1CwCHxM ). “We’re looking at only 480.”

Yellowstone and Grand Teton’s decades-old paddling “bans” are not absolute but do cover most waters in the parks. Hand-propelled watercraft are allowed on some Grand Teton park lakes, as well as the Snake River. In Yellowstone, river paddling is now allowed only in the channel between Lewis and Shoshone lakes.

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