August 6, Christopher Roos, an environmental archaeologist and professor of anthropology at SMU Dallas, for a commentary advocating the U.S. Forest Service update its Smokey Bear wildfire suppression campaign to embrace ‘good fires’ and adopt strategies espoused by indigenous cultures. Published in the Chicago Tribune under the heading Christopher Roos: We need a new Smokey Bear that embraces good fire: https://tinyurl.com/52f5w8r7
On Friday, the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service and other federal agencies will celebrate the 80th birthday of the most potent symbol of America’s wildfire issues — Smokey Bear. Born from a public service advertising campaign, Smokey has achieved his pop culture apogee by association with Bambi in the Disney animation multiverse since the 1960s.
Smokey was at his most effective when convincing Americans that wildfires were bad, that nearly all of them were our fault and that, by our own actions, we could choose to live without wildfire. These attitudes are pervasive in American culture today, but they fail to recognize the long history of humans and good fire, as illustrated so clearly in the beneficial practices of many American Indigenous communities.
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