Smokey the Bear has a new job and motorized users of the national forests don’t like it.

The best known advertising symbol in history, born in 1944, is now trying to tell all-terrain-vehicle riders to prevent forest fires. In a 30-second television spot Smokey, donned in his iconic campaign hat, tells two ATV riders not to start their vehicles in a national forest.

"ATVs give off sparks. You could start a wildfire," the authority figure bear says. As the young men show proper deference and push their now quiet ATVs away, the hidden voice explains that nine out of 10 wildfires are caused by humans.

The Pocatello-based Blue Ribbon Coalition, which represents motorized users, called on the Forest Service to pull the ad.

"Smokey Bear is inappropriately telling members of the motorized trail community that the best way for them to prevent wildfires is to just stay home," Don Amador, the group's Western representative, told the Associated Press.

Smokey made himself famous with the simple fire preservation message: “Only you can prevent forest fires.” But as time went on the Forest Service gave him new tasks and new faces.
When the Forest Service developed a system where it could use revenues from timber sales for reforestation, wildlife enhancement, road-building and a steadily increasing blend of activities, Smokey got a new job, help raise money.

He scolded Americans for wasting valuable timber in a 1951 poster. It came when the Forest Service was beginning its massive campaign to harvest millions of acres of national forest to meet the needs of the post-war boom. Smokey was telling Americans to protect the trees so the Forest Service could sell it to timber companies to cut it down. It also would increase the agency’s budget.

Later, forest rangers and other Forest Service employees became known to many in the public as “Smokeys.” In the 1970s, when Citizen’s Band radios created their own lingo among the nation of truck drivers who used them to communicate on the road, Smokey was the name of the police.

As the environmental awareness grew Smokey’s creators surrounded him with bunnies, fawns and baby squirrels, suggesting that he was the protector of his little friends in the forest. But Smokey, no longer viewed a bear, was an anthropomorphized version of the Forest Service, protecting nature for its own sake.

Long after scientists had resolved the debate over fire’s role in the forest ecosystems of the United States, Smokey was still demonizing fire. University of New Mexico Researcher Melanie Armstrong wrote in 2004: that Smokey’s message, shifting from economic, to spiritual and utilitarian appeals ultimately has simplified the complex ecological issues surrounding fire into “an intangible message about blame and responsibility for an often natural process.”

So now Smokey’s riled the motorized users who say that the ad implies that the legal use of ATVs can start fires. Guess what? It can. As Idahoans know, many range fires are started by exhaust pipes of legal off use vehicles.

Whether the ad is the most effective way to convey the message, ATV advocates might be better off working with the Forest Service on a new ad instead of denying the obvious.

They don’t want to be portrayed as “Smokey and the Bandit.”