Smokey Bear may be fired if environmental literacy programs are cut, report says

"Only you can prevent forest fires," the familiar phrase from Smokey Bear has urged generations to keep campfires under control and not throw down matches in the woods; but Smokey, along with his pal Woodsy Owl, may soon become a thing of the past if Republican House members succeed in cutting the U.S. Forest Service Conservation Education's program for environmental literacy. The program is on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's YouCut website which is now overseen by freshman Tennessee Rep. Scott DesJarlais. The site "asks the public to choose which spending cuts the program should sponsor in Congress," reports Pamela King of Energy & Environment News.

YouCut estimates eliminating environmental literacy programs would save taxpayers $50 million over 10 years, but National Wildlife Federation spokesperson Max Greenberg told King the claimed savings "are tiny by federal government standards." YouCut doesn't specifically mention Smokey and Woodsy in the cut proposal, but King reports Greenburg said in a blog post that it was "ironic that DesJarlais -- a congressman who hails from a state that suffered thousands of wildfires last year, according to data from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture's Division of Forestry -- would suggest eliminating such a famous fire-safety campaign."

The importance of outdoors activities promoted in environmental literacy programs is acknowledged on YouCut's website, but it's also stated that using tax dollars to "generate issue-oriented advocacy" among children is "inappropriate." A spokesperson for DelJarlais' office told King he classifies such programs as "unnecessary expenditures," adding that environmental literacy is being duplicated by other agencies and it's important to reduce duplicate spending. (Read more)