Wilderness Rescue Team

Welcome to the Wilderness Rescue Team website.

The Wilderness Rescue Team is an all-volunteer, 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation that has been serving the people of Maine for more than 40 years. Our mission is to provide search, technical rescue, and medical services in wilderness areas throughout the state.

• We are a member of the Maine Association for Search and Rescue (MASAR).  The Wilderness Rescue Team typically responds to ten or more wilderness emergencies each year. Although our responses are relatively few when compared with municipal emergency services, our skills and services fill a critical need. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for municipal emergency services to provide the types of search and rescue services that we provide. We spend a great deal of time training for the operations that we are asked to execute and are always ready to respond when called.

• Since 1984, we have maintained a written Memorandum of Agreement with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife to provide searchers, medical specialists, and technical rescue services upon their request.  We are called upon numerous times every year to search for missing persons through the IFW.

• We also have been affiliated with Maine’s Baxter State Park Search and Rescue Team since 1976 and regularly train with them. Along with other SAR teams in the state, we provide on-site SAR services in the park on summer weekends. This service involves positioning at least two, and preferably four, team members in the park who can rapidly respond to search, rescue, and medical emergencies.

As a search and rescue team we provide a critical set of skills to assist in wilderness rescue. We train in multiple search and rescue functions such as ground search, lost person behavior, basic life support skills, backcountry rescue, and high angle rescue. We also provide preventative search and rescue programs for groups and members of the public  Although our responses are relatively few when compared with municipal emergency services, our skills and services fill a critical need. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for municipal emergency services to provide the types of search and rescue services that we provide. We spend a great deal of time training for the operations that we may be asked to execute and are always ready to respond when called.