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Show lwvJ CO But on this point former Forest Service Ser-vice Chief John R. McGuires stated in April 1973: "Prescribed fire is for professionals pro-fessionals only! We know of no place in the nation where we can turn our backs on fire and let it run. ..'Careless fires' don't fit" in any situation. '"Careless fires' are the ones we can get at with a mass media approach like Smokey Bear's," said McGuire a decade ago. Present Forest Service Chief R. Max Peterson underwrites that message again today. So as not to mislead a whole generation genera-tion of youngsters, the Forest Service makes it very plain that the 40th birthday bir-thday that it will be observing next year is of an idea hatched mainly by professionals within the Service, NOT of the bear itself. The original Smokey bear was found as a cub, abandoned and partially burned as a result of a forest fire in the Lincoln National Forest in New Mexico Mex-ico in 1950. Personnel from the New Mexico Gas and Fish Department found him clinging to a charred tree and brought him to Santa Fe for treatment treat-ment during the spring of 1950. After the little cub was nursed back to health, he became the first living symbol of the national forest fire prevention campaign which had started in the mid 1940's. He was flown to Washington, D.C., on June 27, 1950, and became the official Smokey Bear. This Smokey Bear died on Nov. 9, 1976 at Washington's zoo, where he had lived since 1950, and he was buried at the Smokey Bear Historical State Park at Capitan, N.M., several days later. A new Smokey Bear, also found abandoned and half starved as a cub in Lincoln National Forest in 1971, came to the Washington zoo that year to understudy the original Smokey. Little Smokey took over as the official Smokey Bear four years later on the retirement of the original due to old age in May 1975. Since 1950 millions of children have come to the Washington Zoo to see Smokey No. 1 and Smokey No. 2. Smokey has taught two generations of children not to be careless with fire. And like the great Mississippi River, "he just keeps rolling along," his admirers ad-mirers note, with his ever-timely message. |
