Suppressing fire forest fires: a bad idea then and now

The Longleaf Alliance came up with some doozies of old fire-suppression propaganda at the Longleaf Workshops at Wiregrass Tech today.

WOODS FIRES
EVERYMAN’S ENEMY
Just in case you couldn’t visualize this enemy well enough, how about as a pale skeleton on a white horse with a B-movie torch?
DEATH RIDES
THE FOREST
Ooh, those shadowy letters!

If all else fails, go for fake religious injunctions, such as

THOU SHALT NOT
DESTROY THY
FORESTS…
It’s best when spoken by Prophet Smokey the Bear.

The Smokey the Bear campaign actually started after the U.S. Forest Service (and the Georgia Forestry Commission) learned that fire is necessary for the health of southern pine forests: without it, undergrowth takes over, and eventually oaks take over, and there’s no more pine forest. That was after forty years or more of official suppression of forest fires. More on that in Leon Neel’s book.

Longleaf Alliance’s own slide was the best:

Taking fire out of the longleaf forest
is like taking rain out of the rain forest!
Ain’t that the truth.

-jsq