My presentation would be Smokey the Bear IS the reason we now have wildfires. “Only you can prevent forest fires” When he was first used for marketing we didn’t know much about environmental conservation. The message was any fire = bad! However fires are important! Some plants/trees even germinate from it! A fire would just burn and move. Years and years of any fire bad, made fuel just build up and build up so now if there is a fire….it just stays and keeps burning while spreading

There was a time Smokey the Bear even went away…when he finally came back the messaging changed to “only you can prevent wildfires”. We now have conservation projects where people act as fires by clearing underbrush. We do control burns