It’s only called the smokey bear effect, this is a sprawl and nimby problem.

Many fire experts embrace controlled, or “prescribed,” fires — purposely set fires that do the cleanup job that small natural fires once did. It takes the tinder out of the tinder box.

But people have built homes and towns close to forests; they don’t like the smoke, and prescribed burns sometimes get out of control.

Allowing controlled burns is a whole separate issues than smokey bear telling people to put out their camp fires and not throw cigarettes into dry leaves…