Even though this news is from last May, I'm just now hearing about it. I have mixed feelings. One the one hand, I like foxes over bears, no doubt about it. But on the other hand, Smokey is just so iconic.
The change happened to start teaching people to stop trying to prevent forest fires, and teach how to live with them because of the massive increase of them in both quantity and severity in recent years.
I see why they made the change, and I'll give Ember a completely fair shot. I like her style better anyways. Feels cleaner and less dated, but they also could have just gave Smokey a visual makeover.
Preventing forest fires entirely is actually bad. Doing some occasional smaller, controlled burns makes the huge and devastating ones less likely to happen. So Ember is less about preventing forest fires, and more about letting the public know how to properly deal with them to make the devastating ones less likely in the future.
(And yes, I'm aware that R34 art of her was made almost instantly. You do you, just know the ethical limits.)
