The San Antonio Missions Baseball Club is committed to helping protect the community in which they live work and play. As team members took to the field over the past three baseball seasons, they also took wildfire prevention messages to the streets, and tonight were honored for their effort with a Bronze Smokey Bear Award.
Bronze Smokey Bear Awards are presented annually by the U.S. Forest Service to organizations or individuals that have made an outstanding contribution to statewide wildfire prevention efforts.
Teaming up with Texas A&M Forest Service employees, the San Antonio Missions Baseball Club supported a local wildfire prevention campaign by posing for pictures with Smokey Bear, playing radio spots and video public service announcements at each home game and inviting TFS to bring Smokey to educate fans on ways to prevent wildfire. The team has been active in spreading Smokey’s prevention message since the record-setting wildfire season of 2011.
Texas A&M Forest Service Mitigation and Prevention Department Head Bruce Woods said he was proud of the commitment of the ball club to protect their community, noting that it very well may have helped save lives and homes.
“While it’s difficult to measure success by what didn’t happen, we have seen evidence that community leaders, the media and the public got the message,” Woods said. “Over the campaign’s three year period the percent of preventable fires in the San Antonio Metropolitan Statistical Areadecreased from 92.44 percent to 86.75 percent, an average of 7.03 percent. During this time, the area was not impacted by large-scale wildfires as compared to other parts of the state with similar population and fuel conditions.”
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Contacts:
Mary K. Hicks, Wildland Urban Interface Specialist
936-546-1590, [email protected]
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