Charles Sykes/Charles Sykes/Invision/AP / Invision
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Invision
The Smokey Bear balloon floats in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thursday, Nov. 25, 2021, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
In the spring of 1950, a group of Native American firefighters rescued a bear cub who clung to a tree as a fire raged in the Capitan Mountains in New Mexico.
After its rescue, the cub became the symbol of the Smokey Bear campaign and was put on display at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.
But the physical public service announcements, which for years showed a black bear in a pair of blue pants, a tan wide-brimmed park ranger’s hat and a metal shovel, confused some zoo goers.
Bennicoff said this outfit was so closely associated with Smokey that some young kids were bewildered when they saw a naked bear at the National Zoo.
Visitors were startled to see a real bear, Bennicoff said. “They were expecting to see the Smokey Bear that they saw in print ads and on television. But lo and behold, there’s this actual bear.”
Forest Service cartoon of Smokey Bear welcoming Little Smokey. / Smithsonian Institution Archives
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Smithsonian Institution Archives
To help with the confusion, the zoo added a special exhibit next to Smokey’s enclosure that featured a park ranger’s uniform in Smokey’s size. During this time, Smokey Bear was receiving so much fan mail that the Zoo had to hire three assistants to keep up with the amount of letters he was getting. He even got his own ZIP code — an honor only bestowed to one other figure: the president.
Smokey retired from the zoo at 25. In human years, he would have been roughly 70, the mandatory retirement age for federal employees at the time. In 1971, the zoo introduced “Little Smokey,” another orphan cub rescued by the Forest Service. When Smokey retired, Little Smokey took over the mantle.
The original Smokey died Nov. 9,1976, a year after his retirement. His remains were returned to New Mexico, where he was buried in the Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, N.M., not far from where he was rescued two decades prior.
A small change for Smokey represents a big change for environmentalism
Wild mustard flowers bloom around a Smokey Bear sign in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Thursday, June 8, 2023.
For five decades, Smokey’s slogan remained the same: “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The message suggested that all fires were preventable and bad for the environment and that nature could return to its original state if fires didn’t occur.
In one ad, Smokey said that if people just took the bear’s message into their hearts, it would be like “the old times, maybe when great herds of buffalo roam the better country.“
Melinda Adams, an Indigenous fire scientist and assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Atmospheric Science at the University of Kansas told Morning Edition that Smokey’s vision of an America without wildfires isn’t accurate.
“When you had colonizers come over and look at land, mosaics or beautiful landscapes, that they developed a narrative of being untouched by humans, virgin lands they arrived in were like that,” Adams said. “But we know through the recent scholarship that that’s not true. We know that Indigenous peoples created these landscapes.”
Adams is a proponent of what she calls good fire — or burns to land that help an environment thrive. This practice is also called prescribed burning.
This is one of the reasons that in 2001, Smokey Bear changed his slogan from only you can prevent forest fires to only you can prevent wildfires. This change in messaging also represented a change in how the U.S. Forest Service approached fire treatment.
“Now, the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S Department of Agriculture are redirecting resources to good fire, beneficial fire during the off fire season in order to reduce the overgrowth that, you know, decades of fire suppression of fire deficiency has left, which makes those areas of lands more flammable,” Adams said.
The road ahead for Smokey
Mario Tama/Getty Images / Getty Images North America
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Getty Images North America
A Smokey the Bear forest fire prevention sign stands in front of snow blanketing the Sierra Nevada mountains after recent storms increased the snowpack on February 23, 2024 near Bishop, California. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Most wildfires are still caused by human activity, which raises the question: Has Smokey’s messaging actually been effective?
John Miller, the chief of Fire and Emergency Response at the Virginia Department of Forestry, said that there is still a lot of work to be done to educate the public on fire safety.
“You can’t just be standing here with your arm around Smokey Bear out and fire prevention, you know, an occasional TV commercial or in a school near you, somehow we need to turn that prevention into more to be more front and center to the public,” Miller said.
Miller believes that one of the big problems is that people are not aware of smaller fires that occur in areas like Virginia all the time.
“Thankfully, because of quick and efficient suppression those fire hours are suppressed quickly. They don’t become newsworthy,” Miller said. “If it hadn’t impacted a home or damaged the public just never hears about that.”
Miller thinks these smaller fires can be prevented, especially because they are often caused by humans who are not aware of simple ways they can be practicing fire safety.
Which is exactly what Smokey Bear’s evolving message is — the best way to continue to spread awareness about safe fires.
“His tips evolve, and there are other things about Smokey and the campaign that have evolved to stay relevant, but that message and focus has always remained consistent,” Danicich said.
This digital story was edited by Obed Manuel.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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