Background:  The National Smokejumper Center is made up of people from all walks of life, mostly retirees and grandparents.  A majority came from careeers in natural resource management - smokejumpers, firefighters, foresters and biologists - joined by teachers and business people.  What brings us together is a concern that today's children, including our very own grandchildren, know little about the natural world around them.  Part of our strength as a nation comes from understanding and appreciating our natural world. We regard this lack of understanding as a very serious problem for our nation's future since citizens who don't understand natural processes - where our food, water and shelter come from - cannot make informed decisions on how to care for our natural resources.

The movement began in 2006 in West Yellowstone, Montana, utilizing an historic log ranger station from the old Madison National Forest as our base.  We attracted kids and their parents to the facility with a Junior Smokejumper program, of great interest to young people, and then exposed them to ecological processes, notably the role of fire.  We emphasized the point that fire in the forest can be both good and bad - bad, when it threatens people's lives and property, but good when it restores the habitat for wildlife and forests that we value. The concept has grown to encompass a broader range of natural resource messages that are reflected in the new name for our West Yellowstone Outdoor Education Center and which provides hands-on experiences for children and their parents.

In 1988, Yellowstone Park was the site of some of the most noteworthy fires in modern times.  Viewed at the time as destroying the park, the fires are now understood to have renewed the park with much healthier wildlife populations and a thrifty, young forest now in place.  This history makes this location uniquely suited to our dual message of the destruction and growth roles of fire.

Mission:  Our educational mission at the restored ranger station is to spark our children's interest in their natural surroundings.  We realize that we can't educate our young people with a single visit, but our presentations are designed to plant a seed in the minds of young people, their parents and grandparents to promote further learning.  We focus on fire ecology because the 1988 fires shaped Yellowstone Park as it exists today.  Our vision is to replicate this approach near other national parks and let each site focus on another aspect of ecology, such as the impact of invasive species. 

Through partnerships with the US Forest Service, the National Park Service and others, we hope to promote ecological understanding by young people.  The use of retirees and grandparents as principal instructors provides a vital service in an era of decreasing federal and state budgets.