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