Preventive Search and Rescue 

Project overview: Help reduce the annual number of search and rescue incidents and preventable accidents by spreading key safety messages through outreach activities, including trailside signs and volunteer-run information stations.

How your support helps: Many of the accidents, injuries, and other incidents that require emergency responses in Yosemite each year are preventable. As a result, the park’s Preventive Search and Rescue (PSAR) initiative, launched in 2007, aims to reduce the number of avoidable incidents through four avenues: enforcement, engineering, education and outreach, and research.

• Enforcement: Rangers enforce seasonal and permanent closures, such as prohibiting rafting on the Merced River when flows are too high or permanently closing Emerald Pool to swimming.

• Engineering: Park managers implement engineering solutions to prevent risky behavior — including extending a railing or building a rock wall — that passively keep hikers from entering areas with a history of frequent search-and-rescue incidents. 

• Education and outreach: In the summer season, PSAR volunteers are stationed throughout the park to connect with visitors and impart safety messaging directly.  Two outreach stations are staffed along the Mist Trail each day. PSAR seasonal rangers, interns, and volunteers are also stationed at Little Yosemite Valley and the Half Dome permit checkpoint as well. Efforts to impart PSAR messaging are also made before visitors arrive in via website and social media content. 

• Research: Additional research is needed to understand fatality and non-fatality incidents in Yosemite. The PSAR team will review records dating back to 2011 from Emergency Medical Services and the Yosemite Clinic to increase our understanding of visitor injuries. 

Whether faced with a public health crisis, exceptionally high water, or a heat wave, the PSAR team’s goal is steadfast: to provide people with the information they need to stay safe, make sound decisions, and enjoy their experience in the park. 

This year: In 2026, this project will support the PSAR team’s enforcement, education and outreach, engineering, and research efforts during Yosemite’s busiest summer months. Conservancy volunteers will manage information stations along the popular Mist Trail, intercepting people before they head up the slippery steps. Farther east, seasonal rangers, interns, and volunteers in Little Yosemite Valley will talk to hikers making their way to Half Dome. With your help, the PSAR team will continue their data-driven, evidence-based approach to identify and implement procedures and management strategies to reduce the number of search-and-rescue incidents. This year, the team will also focus on technology’s influence — both positive and negative — on search-and-rescue occurrences, and on how technology can be leveraged to prevent accidents or medical emergencies.

Project partner: Yosemite National Park