It took 58 years, but, finally, this week, the U.S. Forest Service acknowledged, in principle and fact, that, contrary to Smokey Bear's mantra, "No one can prevent forest fires."

It's the new jingle for a new day, and Smokey and his water bucket are giving way to Reddy, a red squirrel in hard hat, work boots and a rake. He urges all of us to "Be ready" by keeping forest-human "interfaces," such as wooded housing subdivisions, clear of underbrush and other ignitable forest fuels.

It's a beginning. The Forest Service is to be commended for rising above the political smoke screen and helping the public understand that a complicated problem will require complex solutions. It's no longer as simple as dousing every fire as quickly as possible, and even a recent Smokey campaign recognizes that some fires are bad but some are good.

For more than five decades, New Mexico native Smokey - a singed bear cub rescued from a forest fire in Lincoln County's Capitan Mountains - represented the view that all forest fires are bad, should be stopped and that it was our responsibility, each and every one of us, to prevent them.

His cartoon image growled in that familiar, husky voice, in dozens of public service broadcast messages, that "only you can prevent forest fires." We took Smokey to heart.

But the truth is, as fire ecologists proved long ago, wildfires are natural. They play a vital role in revitalizing forests, in propagating some tree species that need fires to sprout and in reducing forest-floor deadwood and brush fuels through small, naturally ignited fires. These fires typically burn uneventfully across the ground and minimize the chances for vast, catastrophic wildfires - such as those in recent years that have devastated New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado.

Give Smokey his due: Most of those infernos were ignited by humans, some deliberately, some carelessly. However, while politicians, lumberjacks and environmentalists square off over who's to blame, clearly decades of fire suppression policy - as part of the Smokey mentality that all forest fires need to be snuffed out - is at the top of the list. It has created the conditions that turn today's forest fires into wildfire hells on Earth.

That policy has resulted in accumulated layers of highly flammable materials that, once ignited, make it much easier for wildfires to reach up and torch treetops. Pushed by winds - in some cases created by their own heat - these fires crown and race through interconnected branches across the forest canopy.

It will be costly, but clearing this fuel, and in some cases thinning brush and the understory of small trees that provide a path to the canopy, will make such dense forests less vulnerable to raging fires. Nature should be left to its own devices in our remaining virgin forests and naturally maintained forests, such as those in national parks and wilderness areas.

However, "monoculture forests," in which single, fast-growth species have been densely planted after clear-cutting, also are targets for raging infernos, particularly in drought years. Public and private foresters should re-evaluate such forests, recognizing that nature gives no quarter and ultimately will demand a high price for human folly.

Another point recently advanced by Sandia National Laboratories scientist Mark Boslough, who is a member of Republicans for Environmental Protection, is that roads into and through forests make it all too easy for humans to deliberately or accidentally start severe forest fires.

Boslough, writing in The Tribune's Insight & Opinion section ("Fewer roads, fewer fires," Aug. 6), makes a good case for reducing catastrophic fires by limiting future forest roads and being judicious in permitting vehicular travel along existing ones, particularly during fire season. The worst of the recent fires were caused by people who got into the forests in motor vehicles. The Big Elk fire in Colorado was ignited directly by the hot catalytic converter of an off-road, four-wheel-drive vehicle.

Boslough makes a strong case for keeping the remaining roadless forests roadless. This, incidentally, also is the view of thousands of Americans who, over the last decade in dozens of public hearings, supported preservation of existing roadless forests.

In this sense, Smokey still is a bit right. As a nation, if we respect nature and adopt smart forest policies, we can limit, though not prevent, catastrophic forest fires.

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