Bigfoot replacing Smokey Bear in fire prevention campaign, The Oregonian

Bigfoot replacing Smokey Bear in fire prevention campaign

Source: The Oregonian

Bigfoot leads state’s effort to prevent wildfires, asks Oregonians to ‘believe’, by Douglas Perry

Everybody knows Smokey Bear and his famous saying, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” The Oregon state fire marshal has decided his office can do even better. Smokey has a lot of ground to cover for the U.S. Forest Service, so Oregon is offering the bear help in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Fire Marshal Jim Walker has recruited an even bigger celebrity – who happens to be a local resident – for his own fire-safety-awareness campaign: Bigfoot.

Fire prevention has never been more important, thanks to climate change and urbanization. Climate and fire experts have warned of a “new normal” in the Northwest: persistent, destructive wildfires and smoky conditions throughout the hot months – and even beyond. “Wildfires can easily be ignited by backyard burning; an unattended campfire; a hot car on tall, dry grass; or from dragging tow chains — and they spread fast,” Walker said in a statement. “We hope our Bigfoot campaign will draw attention and create a bigger ‘footprint’ of wildfire prevention efforts around the state.”

Get it? A bigger footprint. The state campaign’s taglines play on both the large, unusual footprints in the forest that have been attributed to the furry beast and Sasquatch’s mythical status.

“… Leave only footprints,” says one poster for the campaign, showing Bigfoot hiking with some human friends in Oregon’s majestic wilds. “BELIEVE in fire safety,” offers another, perhaps a nod to “The X-Files” motto: “I want to believe.” The poster shows a silhouette of Bigfoot carrying a shovel and a sloshing bucket of water.

The office will be using the hashtag #BelieveInFireSafety on social media.

Bigfoot has been a pop-culture icon in the Northwest for decades. In the 1960s and ’70s, sightings were frequent, and hikers could call a hotline to report seeing the notoriously shy animal. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at the time wrote in its Northwest environmental atlas that Sasquatch’s existence was “hotly disputed.”

All these years later, fascination with the creature lives on.

“Investigators tend to fall within three main groups, believing Sasquatches are either: (a) animals, (b) spirits, or (c) extraterrestrials,” John Zada writes in the new book “In the Valleys of the Noble Beyond.” Some people, Zada adds, believe Bigfoot is an offshoot of “an enormous prehistoric species of Asian gorilla … known to science as Gigantopithecus blacki.” The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization maintains a Bigfoot-sightings database, and OregonLive recently broke it down by Oregon county.

— Douglas Perry