Smokey Bear is Part of Aviation History!

Who doesn’t know about Smokey and his enduring message of fire safety?  Smokey is one of the most successful marketing ideas of all time.  And like most things, timing had a role in its success.  And aviation had a role in Smokey’s success too.

Smokey the bear cub is flown from Santa Fe, N.M., to his new home at the Washington National Zoo in a Piper J-3 Cub by New Mexico Assistant State Game Warden Homer C. Pickens in 1950. The little bear was rescued from a forest fire and named Smokey after the fire prevention symbol of the U.S. Forest Service.

FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

According to Ms. Mansee Khurana for National Public Radio, “the longest-running public service announcement in the U.S. turned 80 years old last week on August 9^th.

“Its message is simple and one you’ve heard many times before: ‘Only you can prevent wildfires.’ Smokey Bear, the beloved park ranger hat-wearing black bear utters these famous words.

“And his birthday came as fires rage in California, Colorado and other Western states. On average, some 70,000 wildfires have been documented every year in the U.S. since 1983, according to data from the National Interagency Fire Center.

“Human-caused climate change has made these fires more intense and dangerous, but it isn’t the only factor: Federal data and various independent studies show that around 80% of all wildfires in the country are caused by humans, making Smokey’s message more relevant than ever.

How World War II influenced Smokey Bear’s creation

Fire burns near a Smokey the Bear fire warning sign as the Oak Fire burns through the area on July 24, 2022 near Jerseydale, California.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

“Smokey Bear’s public service ad was created at the height of World War II in 1944. The U.S. Forest Service had been fighting forest fires for years, but the attack on Pearl Harbor brought a greater need for fire safety messaging, as firefighters were deployed overseas.

“‘When this campaign first launched, it was in the context of our war efforts, and the forests were seen as a resource in that context,’ said Tracy Danicich, director of the Smokey Bear campaign at the Ad Council.

“A few weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, a Japanese submarine sitting off the coast fired shells at an oil facility in Santa Barbara County, Calif. south of the Los Padres National Forest. The attack raised fears that more attacks like this could cause wildfires in forests along the Pacific coast. The Forest Service hoped that connecting the risk of fires to the war effort would help make the case for fighting forest fires more urgent.

“‘There was also a rise in wildfires just from general human carelessness, lack of respect for fire, perhaps lack of knowledge of how to contain and properly respect a fire,’ said Tad Bennicoff, a reference archivist at the Smithsonian Institution archives. ‘So the Forest Service came up with the idea of the Smokey Bear character and the message.’

“But even after World War II ended, Smokey stuck around. He started showing up on posters, U.S. Postal Service stamps, in radio ads and alongside stars like Bing Crosby and Ward Bond.

“You might remember calling the forest fire fighting black bear “Smokey the Bear,” but that isn’t actually his name.

“In 1952, singers Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins wrote a jingle for and added a ‘the’ to maintain the song’s rhythm. This inadvertently created confusion about the bear’s name, but the U.S. Forest Service maintains that Smokey’s official name is ‘Smokey Bear,’ not ‘Smokey the Bear.’

“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 and flight from New Mexico, the cub became the symbol of the Smokey Bear campaign and was put on display at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.

Forest Service cartoon of Smokey Bear welcoming Little Smokey. Smithsonian Institution Archives

“During this time, Smokey Bear was receiving so much fan mail that the Zoo had to hire three assistants to keep up with the number 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.

Smokey’s Future

“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.

“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, they developed a narrative of [these] being untouched by humans, virgin lands. They arrived and the lands 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 or maintained them.’

“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.”

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)

Onward and upward!

This digital story was edited by Obed Manuel.

Sources:  National Public Radio, Getty Images, Smithsonian Institution