Scouting in California has a long history, from the 1910s to the present day, serving thousands of youth in programs related to their environments.
Northern California is a geographic and cultural region that generally comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's 58 counties. Its main population centers include the San Francisco Bay Area, the Greater Sacramento area, the Redding, California, area south of the Cascade Range, and the Metropolitan Fresno area. Northern California also contains redwood forests, along with most of the Sierra Nevada, including Yosemite Valley and part of Lake Tahoe, Mount Shasta, and most of the Central Valley, one of the world's most productive agricultural regions. Northern California is also home to Silicon Valley, the global headquarters for some of the most powerful tech and Internet-related companies in the world, including Meta, Apple, Google, and Nvidia.
Search and rescue (SAR) is the search for and provision of aid to people who are in distress or imminent danger. The general field of search and rescue includes many specialty sub-fields, typically determined by the type of terrain the search is conducted over. These include mountain rescue; ground search and rescue, including the use of search and rescue dogs ; urban search and rescue in cities; combat search and rescue on the battlefield and air-sea rescue over water.
Mountain rescue refers to search and rescue activities that occur in a mountainous environment, although the term is sometimes also used to apply to search and rescue in other wilderness environments. This tends to include mountains with technical rope access issues, snow, avalanches, ice, crevasses, glaciers, alpine environments and high altitudes. The difficult and remote nature of the terrain in which mountain rescue often occurs has resulted in the development of a number of specific pieces of equipment and techniques. Helicopters are often used to quickly extract casualties, and search dogs may be deployed to find a casualty.
Explorer Search and Rescue (ESAR) are teams of Explorers in the Learning for Life program of the Boy Scouts of America who are trained and deployed for search and rescue missions. Well-developed ESAR programs emerged in the state of Washington in the mid-1950s and were followed by others in California and elsewhere. The rugged, mountainous terrain of these areas often require massive amounts of manpower for proper searches for missing people, not to mention their rescue and evacuation from remote areas. The ESAR mission has also expanded over the years to include urban search and rescue and other disaster-related disciplines. Many ESAR groups also provide wilderness safety training to the public.
Mounted search and rescue (MSAR) is a specialty within search and rescue (SAR), using horses as search partners and for transportation to search for missing persons. SAR responders on horseback are primarily a search resource, but also can provide off-road logistics support and transportation. Mounted SAR responders can in some terrains move faster on the ground than a human on foot, can transport more equipment, and may be physically less exhausted than a SAR responder performing the same task on foot. Mounted SAR responders typically have longer initial response times than groundpounder SAR resources, due to the time required to pick up trailer, horse(s), and perhaps also water, feed, and equipment.
According to the California Protected Areas Database (CPAD), in the state of California, United States, there are over 14,000 inventoried protected areas administered by public agencies and non-profits. In addition, there are private conservation areas and other easements. They include almost one-third of California's scenic coastline, including coastal wetlands, estuaries, beaches, and dune systems. The California State Parks system alone has 270 units and covers 1.3 million acres (5,300 km2), with over 280 miles (450 km) of coastline, 625 miles (1,006 km) of lake and river frontage, nearly 18,000 campsites, and 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of hiking, biking, and equestrian trails.
Coast Guard Sector/Air Station Humboldt Bay is a United States Coast Guard Air Station and Sector, with command and primary assets located at the Arcata-Eureka Airport in McKinleyville, California, 16 miles north of Eureka in Humboldt County. The station is the site of the command center for all Coast Guard personnel stationed and assets located on the coasts of Humboldt, Mendocino, and Del Norte Counties. It is one of four air stations in the Eleventh Coast Guard District.
In the United States, mountain rescue is handled by professional teams within some national parks and by volunteer teams elsewhere. Volunteer teams are often members of the Mountain Rescue Association (MRA).
Norman Banks "Ike" Livermore Jr. was an American environmentalist, lumber industry executive, and state official. He was the only member of California governor Ronald Reagan's cabinet to serve during the full eight years of his administration. He played baseball at the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin.
Portland Mountain Rescue is a search and rescue organization based in Portland, Oregon, United States. It specializes in high angle mountain rescue and mountain rescue in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington, as well as providing educational materials and information on mountain and backcountry safety. Secondary areas of operations include Central Oregon and western Washington. The organization is 100% volunteer and has about 65 field-deployable members.
The San Diego Mountain Rescue Team (SDMRT) is an all-volunteer organization located in San Diego County, California operating under the jurisdiction of the San Diego County Sheriff's Department. With approximately seventy active members, SDMRT responds to calls at any time to search for and rescue missing, injured or stranded persons in San Diego County and, through mutual-aid requests, in other counties within the state of California. SDMRT is a fully accredited member of the international Mountain Rescue Association as well as an accredited Type I Mountain Search and Rescue Team. SDMRT routinely works with the San Diego Sheriff's Office Search and Rescue Bureau and San Diego's Aerial Support to Regional Enforcement Agencies (ASTREA) on operations within the county. On operations outside of San Diego County, SDMRT works under the particular agency having jurisdiction for the region in question.
Search and rescue in the United States involves a wide range of organizations that have search and rescue responsibilities.
San Luis Obispo County Sheriff Search and Rescue is an all-volunteer organization in San Luis Obispo County within the county's Sheriff's office. With approximately fifty active members year round, San Luis Obispo County's Search and Rescue (SLOSAR) responds to searches for missing people, evidence and other search requests in the county and on mutual aid calls anywhere in the state of California. SLOSAR is a National Association of Search and Rescue (NASAR) Type II certified team able to handle the urban and wilderness searches below 7,000 feet in elevation.
Juneau Mountain Rescue (JMR) is a mountain search and rescue agency, located in Juneau, Alaska, United States. JMR is a member of the Alaska Search and Rescue Association, and facilitates rescues involving wilderness terrain, rope rescues on rock faces, ice and snow fields, glaciers, and during avalanches, medical evacuations, missing persons cases, aircraft crashes and other disasters. An all-volunteer organization, JMR coordinates with Capital City Fire/Rescue, the Juneau Police Department, the Alaska State Troopers, the United States Coast Guard, and other emergency response agencies during search and rescue operations.
Douglas County Search and Rescue is an all-volunteer organization in Douglas County within Douglas County Sheriff's Office. With approximately sixty active members year-round, Douglas County's Search and Rescue responds to searches for missing children and adults, evidence and other search requests in the county and on mutual aid calls anywhere in the state of Colorado. Douglas SAR is a mountain rescue Type I certified team able to handle the toughest terrain and remain out in the field without resupply for extended periods.
The California Region of the Mountain Rescue Association consists of 20 accredited teams throughout California and also includes one team from Nevada. The California Region is one of the eight regions within the Mountain Rescue Association which is a national volunteer organization in the United States dedicated to saving lives through rescue and mountain safety education.
The Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit (BAMRU) is an all-volunteer, non-profit wilderness search and rescue team specializing in operations involving difficult terrain, challenging weather conditions and high altitude. BAMRU is affiliated with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office and operates throughout California.
Christopher Van Tilburg is an American physician and author specializing in emergency, wilderness, travel, environmental, occupational, and public health medicine. He is author of 11 books on outdoor recreation, wilderness medicine, and international travel, including two memoirs on mountain rescue Mountain Rescue Doctor: Wilderness Medicine in the Extremes of Nature and Search and Rescue: A Wilderness Doctor's Life-and-Death Tales of Risk and Reward.
San Rafael, CA 
