As a retired U.S. Forest Service employee I often shake my head when I see listings for natural resource management agencies, a field I spent my career in. Listings often confuse the large number of this type of agency at the federal, state, and local levels.  This does not necessarily mean the item is not genuine or that the seller listed it fraudulently.  It often reflects the confusion of the public, including both sellers, buyers, and "people on the street" on the subject of government natural resource management organizations.  There are also non-government organizations involved in natural resource management or environmental issues.  Some sellers may mix many agencies or organizations into one listing, some due to that confusion and some to try to increase the perceived value of the item.  These items may be uniform components such as patches, badges, hats, shirts, belts, and coats; signs; tools, toy or real vehicles, books, correspondence, plates, pins, postcards, maps, CD's, brochures, and many others.  What follows is a narrative of those agencies that may help buyers and sellers to understand the items they are dealing with in order to understand its significance and/or value. At the end are several paragraphs with some of the specifics to watch for.        

There are five primary land management agencies in the federal government:  the U.S. Forest Service (U.S. Department of Agriculture) that manages National Forests; and four within the U.S. Department of Interior; the National Park Service that manages National Parks, National Monuments, National Recreation Areas, National Seashores, National Historic Sites, and some other land designations; the Bureau of Land Management that manages the public federal lands not under the jurisdiction of other federal agencies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that manages National Wildlife Refuges; and the Bureau of Indian Affairs that holds lands in trust for Native Americans .  All five of these agencies have fire management organizations with fire prevention and suppression equipment such as engines, patrols, water tenders (trucks with more than a thousand gallon water tank), hand crews (with all but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service having a special type of hand crew known as "hotshot crews"), air tankers, helicopters, dozers, lead planes, aerial reconissance aircraft, air attack supervisor's planes, and lookouts (with the exception of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service).  There is some confusion created by the fact that the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have some National Monuments and National Recreation Areas under their jurisdiction just like the National Park Service. 

Each of these federal agencies has distinctive uniforms and should patches, with the badges of non-law enforcement employees being very different from each other.  The U.S. Forest Service has a khaki colored shirt with a shield shaped patch and green pants; the National Park Service has a grey shirt with an arrowhead shaped patch and green pants; the Bureau of Land Management has a tan shirt with a inverted triangle shaped patch and dark brown pants; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, like the BLM, has a tan shirt and dark brown pants, with a shoulder patch having a flat top and sides with the bottom being rounded; and the BIA not having a uniform for most agency personnel, law enforcement and fire management being the exception, but with most uniforms being worn by the personnel of individual indian nations, reservations, and tribes.  The law enforcement badges of each agency is in the shape standard to all federal law enforcement agencies with the eagle on top.  It is the center of the badge and wording around the center that varies from agency to agency. 

There are three other land managing agencies in the federal government that are not as well known but provide water, power, and recreational resources for us:  the Bureau of Reclamation in the U.S. Department of the Interior, that has built and maintains irrigation facilities, dams, and reservoirs, most of those with recreation facilities and land, primarily in the western U.S.; the Tennessee Valley Authority, providing resources similar to the Bureau of Reclamation, but in the Tennessee River Valley and vicinity; and the Army Corps of Engineers in the Defense Department that has built and maintains several hundred water projects such as canals, waterways, flood control facilities, dams, and reservoirs, with many of these providing a huge amount of recreation opportunity, especially in the eastern U.S. Lets not leave out the Department of Defense and the land management they conduct on military reservations (bases, forts, etc.).  They only provide recreation for service personnel and exclude the public but manage forests, brush, grasslands, soils, watersheds, and wildlife, often modifying military activities in order to provide and protect these resources.  With the exception of military reservations civilian land management personnel all have uniforms and law enforcement organizations. 

There are a few more federal natural resource management agencies that do not manage land with the title held by the United States of America, those being:  the National Ocean Service that manages National Marine Sanctuaries, Marine Protected Areas, and National Estuarine Research Reserves (OK, these are on land); the National Marine Fisheries Service that regulates the harvest of ocean going fish and their habitat; both of these in the U.S. Department of Commerce; and the National Resource Conservation Service (the old Soil Conservation Service) in the U.S. Department of Agriculture that provides advice for owners of private, mostly agricultural lands. Finally there is the EPA or the Environmental Protection Agency, an independent agency that reports directly to the President, that does not directly manage land or resources but provides many of the standards for environmental quality on both public and private lands.   

States typically have a forestry, a fish and game (or wildlife or some combination), and a parks agency.  Some smaller states combine these into "Parks and Wildlife" or "Forestry and Parks."  Many counties and cities have similar agencies.  The federal government had an agency called the "Civilian Conservation Corps", which existed only nine years (1933-1944) and the State of California has a youth program (not a reform or inmate organization) modeled after it called the "California Conservation Corps", both of which were/are involved in natural resource management.  There is website that has pictures of all the state forestry agencies patches and comparing the pictures of the known genuine patches with the sale item might be helpful. The website is:  

forestry.about.com/library/gallery/blg-pat_index.htm

Copy and paste this address to your browser as eBay does not allow links to non-eBay sites to be included in reviews. 

All of the above have law enforcement officers (with the exception of civilian military reservation personnel, the Natural Resource Conservation Service, and the original and California's CCC.  Most or many have rangers (some with and some without law enforcement qualifications), conservation officers, foresters, wildlife and fisheries biologists, soil scientists, hydrologists, range conservationists, recreation managers, fire management officers, ecologists, and hundreds of other occupations. 

What does this all have to do with eBay?  The following is some specific information that relates to the above narrative. 

All federal and state wildland fire management agencies use Smokey Bear (his middle name is not "The" - he never had a middle name) in their fire prevention efforts under a nationwide cooperative program managed by the U.S. Forest Service.  Any genuine Smokey Bear items must have a license from the U.S. Forest Service and this is so stated on items available for purchase when new.  Used items might be genuine but the tags and packaging showing reference to the license are long gone.  There are a lot of counterfeit items in existence, many of those from Asia, and they are difficult to distinguish at times.  Larger eBay sellers with licenses will often state they are licensed because they know there are so many knock offs and having licensed goods increases their value.  How do you know if the seller of new Smokey Bear merchandise is licensed?  One is to go to smokeybear.com and click on the FAQ's.  One of the questions addresses this and has a link to a list of licensed vendors. The site also has guidelines on the use of the Smokey Bear image and you can begin to distinguish knock offs when the items do not appear as the guidelines show. Many counterfeit manufacturers make the mistake of calling the item "Smokey the Bear" and Smokey has never had a "the" in the official name, the confusion being caused by a 1952 song where "the" was inserted for rhythm purposes only and has been causing confusion ever since.  You might be familiar with the words "prowling and a growling and a sniffing in the air" from the song.  This song is not an official part of the Smokey Bear program.   

One of the best ways to distinguish a genuine agency item from counterfeits is to do a search on the agency name.  The official names listed above will lead right to the agency the first time if you enter it exactly as is listed.  Look at their logos, uniforms, decals, and the like carefully and compare them with the item you are looking at in the eBay listings. The letter font, shape of a shield or outside border, and similarity of color, texture, and shape of wildlife, trees, rivers, mountains, and such may differ from that of the agency logo. 

Agency logos are not normally reproduced by private manufacturers.  A license to produce items with logos is often required by the agency and it is protected by law, regulation, or a copyright.  There are a lot of counterfeiters, especially in the patch selling business.  See guides under patches and pins for more specific advice on these. Some agencies, the U.S. Forest Service, have licensed logo image resellers whose commercial activity advances the purposes of the agency.  To see a list of those licensed resellers, search the agency's website.  They are readily available on some websites and not on others.  Federal uniform components such as shirts and hats have a label that will state "official (insert agency) uniform."  In most cases the uniform item is not the current version or is being sold without the agency's knowledge.  Collecting of these official items is usually done by individual employees in contact with other agency employees or by people who contact the agency directly.  Some agency personnel or agencies frown upon this type of collecting and this makes it more difficult, while encouraging some to counterfeit. If you don't see an official patch or logo on the item ask for a picture that shows it.  I've seen many listings for items such as a "Ranger's Coat" that doesn't have a patch or a picture of the label, don't value the item as official unless it has one or both. Ask the seller to provide a picture of the patch or the garment label before accepting it as an official uniform item.    

If a large seller does not list the agency name correctly and confuses the agencies much like the general public does, examples, "Forest/Park Ranger Hat", "National Forest/Park/Wildlife Officer Coat", or "U.S. Park Service", "National Parks Service", "National Forest Service", "U.S. Fish and Game", "U.S. Department of Natural Resources (DNR), and similar, they are not familiar with the agency.  These may seem like small mistakes for most, but large sellers that make these mistakes have no acquaintance with the agency and could be selling counterfeits or illegal items.  This applies mostly to large sellers, not the small seller who may have picked up a legitimate item in a garage sale or estate.  In those cases it is difficult for the buyer to tell unless they are familiar with the agency themselves. 

As for Forest Service signs many will state that the sign is from 1921 - 1928, or 1951 - 1954 even though the font and wording is more contempory.  All Forest Service signs, manuals, handbooks, forms, filing, and correspondence follow a numerical sequence.  The sign probably shows a 27 dash something or a 54 dash something.  2000 is the Forest Service number series titled "National Forest Resource Management" and its "Special Use" program is 2700, "Timber Management" is 2400, and "Wildlife, Fish, ........" is 2600 just to name a few.  5000 is the number series titled "Protection and Development" and the "Fire Management" program is 5100, while the "Landownership" program is 5400.  The signs, for example, have abbrevations of 27 - (plus number to indicate the sign number in each program), 26, 24, 51, 54, etc.  These do not indicate the year the sign was manufactured!  Don't buy a sign with a 26 number and think it was made in 1926, the 26 signifies it is a wildlife program sign and the often listed "Forest Service 1954" sign may have been made in 2007 or earlier, but will be a lands program sign such as a boundary marker, survey marker, or similar. You have to look at other factors in deciding the age of a Forest Service sign.  

Lastly, any fire tool or equipment item sold under the title "Forest Service Supply" and has only the letters "FSS" on it is not a U.S. Forest Service specific item.  "FSS" stands for "Federal Supply Schedule" and just signifies it was obtained through the General Services Administration of the U.S. Government.  All federal agencies and some state wildland fire agencies have access to these items. 

Good luck buying or selling these items!