Wilderness SAR

Wilderness Search and Rescue

This is Search and Rescue in the wilderness and rural environments – such as mountains, dessert, forest, woods and fields and away from urban towns, villages and city civilization.

Wilderness can be defined as an uninhabited region devoid of any synthetic (manmade) amenities.

Wilderness Search & Rescue often includes mountain rescue skills, bush craft / field survival, navigation, tracking, meteorology, and rope rescue work and water rescue skills as well as the obligatory studies in lost person behaviour, missing person studies, search methods and formations, uniform / clothing especially for extreme heat / cold, PPE (personal protective equipment), safety, DRA (Dynamic Risk Assessments), kit and equipment, etc

It is sometimes confused with ‘Wilderness Medicine’ which whilst many parallels exist – have two separate focuses being Wilderness and Medicine, respectively. (Wilderness Medics may form part of a Wilderness SAR team and trained to deal with medical emergencies that occur in remote locations.)

Again. like GSAR, it may also include the use of specialist and technical adjuncts such as

    • The Use of Search Dogs

    • The Use of Mountain Bikes

    • The Use of Horses

    • The Use of NVGs (Night Visions Goggles) / Thermal Imaging, etc