Yesterday marked the 65th anniversary of the longest running public service advertising campaign in U.S. history. More importantly however, it was Smokey Bear’s birthday.
Smokey Bear’s position as an American icon is surpassed only by his role as an educator of our youth. Here in North Carolina, our forest rangers can often be found in schools, at community events, and anyplace where children may gather imparting his lessons of fire prevention, as he has done for generations.
The Smokey Bear Wildfire Prevention campaign was created in 1944 with the original phrase "Smokey Says – Care Will Prevent 9 out of 10 Forest Fires.” That slogan has changed over the years to "Remember... Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" to most recently "Only You Can Prevent Wildfires," in response to an outbreak of wildfires in 2001, which were outside forested areas.
No matter which of these slogans is used, the meaning hasn’t changed in the generations that have passed since Smokey Bear’s original 1944 message. Fire prevention is st
ill as relevant today as it was then, especially here in North Carolina where more than 40 percent of all wildfires are caused by careless debris burning. North Carolina has approximately 18.7 million acres of ecologically diverse and productive forestland and a thriving forest industry, which are both important to the economy and ecology of our state, making the state’s forests a valuable, renewable, resource that deserves protecting.
So on behalf of all of the staff of the N.C. Division of Forest Resources, happy belated birthday, Smokey! I would also like to take this time, in honor of Smokey Bear’s birthday, to thank the dedicated men and women who fight wildfires, especially those folks from around North Carolina who work so hard to protect our state’s and our nation's natural resources.