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Pedantism: Smokey the Bear is employed by the US Forest Service, not the National Park Service.
Pedantism 2: Preventing forest fires was a huge mistake and has helped set the stage for the current epidemic of gigantic wildfires.
Pedantic lvl3:
Uncontrolled campfires would still be a problem in a well managed forest. Forest fires in healthy forests are still dangerous for hikers or unknowing inhabitants.
Pedantic lv4 a few hikers dying is less bad than preventing even uncontrolled forest fires since forest fires are part of the natural cycle of most forests and are entirely necessary, and the forests have adapted specifically to unpredictable forest fires.
Pedantic rapid fire:
The policing of poor campground usage is not the same as systemic forest management pointed towards natural fire patterns.
Return fire:
Natural fire patterns are unpredictable and are in fact not patterns, moreover if forest fires were allowed to happen as frequently as they did before human forest management, the fires themselves would be less severe and pose practically no threat.
Additionally not building tinderbox buildings in previously forested areas or areas backed up against forests while allowing fires to happen as they will would minimize damage and loss of life while massively improving the ecological health of the area.
Seriously though responsible visitor education is a completely parallel effort to woodland urban interface planning, controlled burns, natural land restoration etc.
I was gonna say, we need more forest fires at this point, not fewer...
Naturalistic Fallacy
Controlled back burning needs to be done. Just letting them run rampant is not a good idea though.
Why? Where?
Forest fires are natural and important. By doing it in a controlled fashion, you limit the damage an unplanned fire can cause. I've seen forestry people do it. They had a truck with a literal fuckin flamethrower on the back just driving by and torching brush on the side of the road and letting it spread.
Strange. I wonder if this is the same as "hunters need to hunt deers because we have no wolves".
Normally trees die and stay there, etc. I never heard that natural old growth forests need wild fires.
It depends on the forest, but there are fire adapted forests that benefit from fire. We've completely changed the understory by suppressing fire, meaning the succession of the forest is totally different now. Also many non-native invasive plants, that aren't fire adapted, are thriving and blocking sunlight to native seedlings. The lack of fire has also made the tick problem worse.
BTW I should mention, when the forest burns often (once every 6-10 years), then you get "good" fires. Fires which are less than a meter tall and quickly move through the leaf litter and scrub layer. Trees are left intact, nutrients are recycled into the soil, new growth of fire-adapted species returns quickly.
If you don't get frequent fires all that stuff builds up, and in fifty years you get a total conflagration that climbs into the overstory and creates a raging inferno. This is what you see on the news. These are bad and can completely destroy a forest for decades or even centuries.
I never heard that natural old growth forests need wild fires.
Fire adapted ecosystems abound. Pretty much the entire Sierra Nevada for example. Most if not all coniferous forests. Prairies and Savanna. Some species need fire to propagate and survive.
Fire good.
More pedantism: It’s Smokey Bear, no “the.” Wikipedia