SMOKEY THE BEAR

FOREST CREATURES
SPARKS A LOT
ONLY YOU
FROM THE ASHES
CELEBRITY STATUS
THE THE
AN ACT OF CONGRESS
MAKE LIKE A TREE
A NEW LEAF
SMOKEY'S DAILY LOG
COOL LIKE FUZZY

FOREST CREATURES
Like Smokey Bear, we are all creatures of the forest, we rely on the forests to provide much of how we make up our world. Without wood to build your house you'd be sleeping in a cave and there just aren't that many caves to go around. Forests cover almost 1/3 of the Earth's land mass. Asides from recreation, beauty, building materials, fuel and medicine forests keep our planet livable by providing us with the oxygen we suck down everyday. Without forests, much of the world would be as about as friendly as the surface of Mars at high noon.

SPARKS A LOT
Obviously one of the greatest threats to a forest is fire. Pretty devastating stuff, especially if your house is near the forest where it most likely will also go up in flames. Houses can be rebuilt in a relatively short amount of time compared to the rebuilding of an entire forest. The average forest is between 70 to 100 years old, that's nearly a lifetime for most people on this rock. That's just the young forests, some of the older stands are between 4,000 and 5,000 years old, meaning if they burn down, none of us will ever see the likes of them again.

ONLY YOU
The slogan, "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" was introduced to Americans in 1944 by the Forest Fire Prevention Campaign and the Ad Council. Since its induction, the number of forest acres lost to fire has fallen from 22 million a year to just 4 million.

FROM THE ASHES
It is only fitting that someone who has faced and lost everything they have ever known to a forest fire became our champion against it. Smokey Bear was a real black bear from New Mexico. After surviving a monstrous fire in the Capitan Mountains the baby black bear was found charred and scarred high atop a burnt out tree. He was rescued and flown to Santa Fe for medical treatment, having suffered severe burns on his paws and hind feet. Word about the bear spread quickly and soon the Associated Press picked up the story and it became national news.

CELEBRITY STATUS
The bear was soon known all over the country and fan mail started to pour in, so the New Mexico Game Warden wrote an official letter to the Chief of the Forest Service presenting the cub to the agency with the understanding that the bear would be dedicated to a new publicity program for fire prevention and conservation. Through this the bear found a new home at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where he became the living symbol of Smokey Bear.

THE THE
Many of us know Smokey Bear as Smokey the Bear, but his official name is just Smokey Bear, so how did this happen? Well in 1952, Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote a song about Smokey. In order for them to maintain the correct rhythm in the music they had to add the ?the? between Smokey and Bear. Wildly debated, the "the" has caused much confusion, yet Smokey's name never changed, he always was and is named Smokey Bear.

AN ACT OF CONGRESS
In 1952, an Act of Congress placed Smokey under the control of the Secretary of the Agriculture and the collected royalties and fees were used to support continued education on the prevention of forest fires.

MAKE LIKE A TREE
The oldest trees in the world are the bristle cone pines with the well-known sequoias trailing a very close second. Many of these ancient timbers are between 4,000 and 6,000 years old, which makes them newly born saplings when the Egyptians were constructing the pyramids.

A NEW LEAF
The year 2000 saw many wild fires in the United States which sparked a revamping of the Smokey campaign that targeted adults as well children, the new slogan is now "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires". This year marks the 60th Anniversary for Smokey and his fight against fire.

SMOKEY'S DAILY LOG
Note to self: Without trees there wouldn't be any fruits or nuts, no paper for books, no cocoa beans to make chocolate, no maple syrup for pancakes in the morning, no coffee beans to make coffee in the morning and no oxygen to breathe. Hmmm, make it a priority to protect these trees.

COOL LIKE FUZZY
Smokey's image is hip, cool and so deeply retro. I was at a tattoo party recently and a girl was getting Smokey Bear tattooed on her back. That's dedication.