| On the 9th of August, Smokey Bear birthday is celebrated in USA - forest preservation day from fire.
Smokey Bear is a sympathetic bear-cub, which warns about the forest fires and is a symbol of US Forest Department. In television broadcast series “Save the forest from fire”, a bear-cub is depicted in hat and jeans and enunciates a sentence “Only you can prevent forest fires”.
Forest Department, huge organization in the history of America, was created in 1944. Event, which occurred in 1950, served as a live personification of the organization.
One fine spring day in the mountains of New Mexico, smoke puffs, emanating from forest, are noticed from a fire tower. Strong wind helped the fire to quickly engulf the forest. Everyone, whosoever could, participated in extinguishing the fire, starting from fire department and ending with local citizens,
Suddenly, fire personnel noticed a bear-cub. Fire personnel did not disturb the bear-cub anticipating that, its mummy-bear could be searching for the cub.
After several hours, the fire was put-off. Local citizens and fire personnel once again found the bear-cub lonely. Bear-cub hid in wide hollow of a tree. Claws of bear-cub were bleeding due to burns.
News got spread and the history has become the possession of press. Citizens wrote letters to Department to find out the health condition of bear cub. Shortly after, the bear-cub was transferred to National Zoo Park in Washington. Thus, bear cub named Smokey Bear has become a live symbol of National Society for nature protection from fires.
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This week marks the 63rd anniversary of Smokey Bear - the
fictional character which was created to increase the public awareness of forest
fires. This is the longest ongoing public campaign in US history, and
it helped reduce the annual area lost to fires from 22 to 4 million
acres. The recent survey showed that 95% of the Americans can complete
the Smokey's phrase "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires" when given the
first words.
