Silent Sports Sounds Off

Earlier this week, the motorized recreation industry successfully pressured the U.S. Forest Service into dropping a public service announcement. The ad featured Smokey Bear warning ATVers not to start their machines in national forests.

“ATVs give off sparks. You could start a wildfire,” Smokey tells them. As the young men apologize and push their vehicles away, a narrator warns that nine out of 10 wildfires are caused by humans.

Calling the ad “misleading and unfair,” the BlueRibbon Coalition, an Idaho-based group that advocates for ever more motorized access to public lands, demanded that the USFS pull the ad and apologize for its release.

“Smokey Bear is inappropriately telling members of the motorized trail community that the best way for them to prevent wildfires is to just stay home,” BRC representative Don Amador said, according to news reports.

The BRC’s complaints were widely reported on Tuesday. By today, the 30-second spot, produced by the Ad Council, was no longer available for viewing on the U.S. Forest Service website or YouTube.

In an e-mail to Silent Sports, USFS spokeswoman Allison Steward wrote, “It appears that the Ad Council’s ‘ATV’ PSA has not resonated with a target audience of key recreational users of the National Forest System and the Ad Council has requested that media companies discontinue airing the PSA.”

The campaign against the PSA included videos critical of it, including one that depicts a mountain biker confronting ATVers before the biker lights up a cigarette and carelessly discards her lit match.

That video and the BRC argue that ATVs equipped with USFS-approved spark arresters do not start fires.

– Joel Patenaude