{"id":97111,"date":"2018-11-13T15:19:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-13T22:19:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/artistic-tribute-to-416-fire-cub-donated-to-durango-welcome-center\/"},"modified":"2018-11-13T15:19:15","modified_gmt":"2018-11-13T22:19:15","slug":"artistic-tribute-to-416-fire-cub-donated-to-durango-welcome-center","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/artistic-tribute-to-416-fire-cub-donated-to-durango-welcome-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Artistic tribute to 416 Fire cub donated to Durango Welcome Center"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A bench donated to the Durango Welcome Center features a bear cub rescued from the 416 Fire.<\/span>Theresa Blake Graven\/Durango Area Tourism Office<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A wooden tribute to the female bear cub rescued from the 416 Fire has moved into the Durango Welcome Center.<\/p>\n

Alpine Bank donated a bench depicting the beloved cub and Smokey Bear to the center Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n

The bench is also engraved with the message \u201conly you,\u201d a reference to the slogan \u201conly you can prevent forest fires.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Alpine
Alpine Bank President Eric Eicher talks with Durango Area Tourism Office Executive Director Frank Lockwood on Monday next to a bench the bank donated to the Welcome Center. Travis Reed carved the bench in honor of the 416 Fire during a contest held at Purgatory Resort over the summer.<\/span>Mary Shinn\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Local artist Travis Reed crafted the bench during Carve Wars<\/a>, a chainsaw art contest held at Purgatory Resort, where it won first place. The contest was held in early July about a month after the 54,000-acre 416 Fire started 10 miles north of Durango.<\/p>\n

Alpine Bank bought the bench at the contest with the intention of donating it, bank president Eric Eicher said.<\/p>\n

The piece fits in well with the forest fire prevention messages the Durango Area Tourism Office plans to promote next year, said Theresa Blake Graven, a public relations strategist for the office. DATO runs the Welcome Center as part of its marketing efforts.<\/p>\n

\"Smokey
Smokey Bear visited the cub burned in the 416 Fire in July at a rehabilitation center near Del Norte.<\/span>Courtesy of Southwest Colorado Wildfire Coalition file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cIt\u2019s just a good talking point for everyone here now, and a good reminder of what can happen,\u201d Eicher said.<\/p>\n

The office also plans to educate visitors about how to treat public land to prevent some of the negative side effects of heavy visitation, such as increased litter and widening of trails, Blake Graven said.<\/p>\n

At least some of the messages will be promoted online, so visitors can be educated before they arrive, she said.<\/p>\n

The Colorado Tourism Office is partnering with the nonprofit Leave No Trace<\/a> on a strategy to promote similar messages statewide, she said.<\/p>\n

\"Travis
Travis Reed sculpts a bench July 7 during Carve Wars at Purgatory Resort. He crafted the piece in an hour during the timed event. It was the first time Purgatory Resort has hosted the event.<\/span>Mary Shinn\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tourism office gets tribute to 416 Fire cub, to promote fire prevention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97112,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[2838,120,1187],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-97111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-416-fire","tag-colorado","tag-tourism"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97111"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=97111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}