Really.. she said it was in a national park and the Voice also said it was in a national park??? Editor, where art thou, editor?
Here’s the link and below is an excerpt:
As a kid raised by environmentalists, she grew up with him, she says, and feels a particular connection to the affable, but informative cultural touchstone invented by the US Forest Service in 1944. “So I thought it was a perfect culture-jamming opportunity to take this very familiar conservationist and turn him into an anti-fracking activist,” she told the Voice.
The Forest Service, on the other hand, isn’t a fan of LaRoe’s representation of a Smokey who tries to prevent “faucet fires.” Nearly a year after LaRoe began carrying images of a newly-radicalized Smokey Bear to protests, selling t-shirts, and circulating what soon became a viral meme online, the Forest Service asked LaRoe to cease and desist.
“The feds want to frack our national parks,” LaRoe said. “It’s not surprising that they’re coming after me to try and censor my political speech.”
For nearly two years, the Forest Service has been embroiled in a debate over whether to allow hydraulic fracturing in western Virginia’s George Washington National Park.
Personally, I think the Park/Forest convolution was very poor journalism. Not just accidentally wrong, but egregiously wrong on something very easy to understand and easy to check (like from the link within the article to the GW national forest).
Which lead me to this story the cited, which has nothing to do with the Forest Service but seems to be about giving loans to poor rural people for their homes. Weird convolutions.
looks like they edited without acknowledging the correction
char miller, director w.m. keck professor of environmental analysis environmental analysis program pomona college 185 e. sixth street claremont ca 91711 909-607-8343 [email protected] ________________________________
Really, we don’t know that she said National “Park”….She may have been misquoted by a reporter based in New York City who may not even be aware of the difference between National Forests, Parks, Monuments, etc. When we worked more nationally on National Forest issues, the media would often incorrectly use the work “Park” sometimes even in headlines of our opeds in which we talked about National “Forests.” Anyway, I wouldn’t try and make too much hay out it.
Regarding the Forest Service getting all Big Brother copyright law legal on Miss LaRoe, that too has happened before….although much props for the “Only you can prevent faucet fires” message! Back in the mid-90s activist Mat Jacobson produced a graphic of Smokey Bear hiding a chainsaw behind his back. Around the same time another image of Smokey behind bars with the caption “Free Smokey” appeared. Both times, the Forest Service sent “cease and desist.”
Ironically, both then as now, if the Forest Service would “cease and desist” with poor land management activities the Smokey2.0 graphics wouldn’t even be needed. Good to know where the USFS’s priorities are though.
P.S. Also worth pointing out that it’s Smokey Bear, not Smokey the Bear. We could pick on the Village Voice blog for making the mistake (perhaps as part of some people’s efforts to ‘prove’ that Urban Easterners don’t know about “our” issues out west), but I’d estimate that most often Smokey Bear is called Smokey the Bear no matter what the location.
I shared a “barracks” with an artist who worked in the local Supervisor’s Office. He drew Smokey’s evil twin, Fiery Bear, holding a drip torch in one paw and a dead deer in the other. Someone in the office liked it so much that they stole it out of his office. It is unfortunate that some continue to demonize Smokey as bad for the environment.
Also, regarding the “the”, it has become quite cliche to correct people. I “like” Smokey on Facebook, and some people just have to correct every single poster who uses “the” in the middle. Funny that “Uncle Sam” is often “re-drawn”, with no heartburn from the government.
So what is new. Anything the U. S. government management does is bad. Good idea, bad management. Life has become a Godzilla movie.
The idea that fracking will contaminate the southern tier of NY is disingenuous, in part because similar processes, going back even to the American Indians have already contaminated the water table. American metals have been mined for ten millenia. North American copper mines go back to 55000 BC. Arsenic is a poisonous element found within minerals at many of the world’s copper mines. There have been over a thousand mines in the Southern Tier. Pennsylvania coal mining also included New York’s Tioga county especially BLossburg and Fall Brook. Bluestone from the Southern Tier has been used in construction for centuries. Dolomite has been minded in Gates, just west of Rochester. New York is the only state in the U.S. that produces wollastonite. New York ranks first in the nation in the output of garnet. New York ranks third in the production of salt. Century old Endicott Forging at North Street and Hayes Avenue, shut down after a raging fire in February 2000 At one point, more than 115,000 gallons of oil was stored on the property. In February 2004, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) reclassified the IBM Endicott site to a class 2 State Superfund site. In 1979, IBM Endicott reported a spill of 4,100 gallons of chloroform. The degree of contamination is highest along the railroad between Watson Boulevard and North Street.
Plasma pulse fracking is unlike traditional hydraulic fracking, which uses high-pressure water, sand, and chemicals to break apart rock formations, plasma pulse fracking employs high-energy electrical pulses to create small, controlled plasma explosions within the well1. Plasma pulse technology does not require the use of harmful chemicals, which significantly reduces the risk of groundwater contamination1\Traditional fracking uses millions of gallons of water, which can strain local water resources. Plasma pulse fracking, on the other hand, does not use water, making it a more sustainable option The absence of chemicals and water means there is less waste to manage and dispose of, leading to a smaller environmental footprint Plasma pulses can effectively clear blockages and sedimentation in wells, improving the flow of oil and gas without the need for extensive mechanical intervention