"The U.S. Forest Service is installing an animatronic Smokey Bear in the lobby of its headquarters building, a $55,000 Disney-like creation designed to greet visitors.

Smokey's push for a Washington comeback has spanned the presidencies of two Bush's and a Clinton, with the unveiling planned for early August. Smokey is the centerpiece of the Yates Building's new Visitor Information Center.

Bureaucrats at the Forest Service during the tenure of President George Bush came up with the idea, but funding wasn't approved by Congress until President Bill Clinton's administration.

The bear will sit with his feet propped up on the edge of a roll-top desk. As visitors enter he will look up from his mail--he receives so much he has his own ZIP code, 20252--and address guests. His greetings will include his most famous phrase, "Remember, only you can prevent forest fires."

The scene is based on "Smokey's Fan Mail," a poster created in 1979 by Rudolph Wendelin, the most prominent of Smokey's artist caretakers.

Smokey will direct visitors to a 1920s style log lodge. Inside, a partially touch-interactive exhibit will illustrate how the Forest Service compiled and manages 192 million acres in 155 national forests and 20 grasslands.

In addition to maps and brochures now available, computer terminals will allow access to information about the National Parks Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs and Fish and Wildlife Service, said George Lennon, the Forest Service's director of communications.

The exhibit also includes segments on President Theodore Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot, the service's first chief.

"Smokey's message is still as true today as it was 20 years ago," Lennon said. Shortly after Lennon joined the communications office in 1998, he revived the project that had stalled in the early 1990s. As a child, he had visited a "real" Smokey Bear at the National Zoo.

In 1950, a bear cub rescued from a fire near Capitan, N.M., was named Smokey Bear after the character originated in the 1940s by Albert Staehle for the War Advertising Council and the Forest Service. That Smokey died in 1976 and was buried at Smokey Bear State Historical Park in Capitan.

Advanced Animations Inc. of Stockbridge, Vt., delivered Smokey to the Forest Service in late May, said Mark Miller, the company's vice president and project director. The project took several months from design to completion.

Advanced Animations' work also appears at Universal Studios and Tokyo Disneyland" (Carol M. Kaelin, States News Service, The Washington Post, June 25, 2001).