When the Silver Alert legislation changed in 2021, it expanded who and what age groups can have a Silver Alert issued on them, said Joshua Bubier, Warden Service lieutenant and statewide search and rescue coordinator for the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Though it may seem to the public like there has been an uptick in the number of Silver Alerts, it may just be related to this legislation change, he said.

Historical data for search and rescue calls are stored together, so it is difficult to know which were search calls, which were rescue calls and which were both, Bubier said. It was only in the last fiscal year, which has not yet been completely compiled yet, that the department started discerning the difference.

Most of the search and rescue calls the Warden Service get involve hikers, according to Bubier. During the 2023 fiscal year, hikers made up nearly 20% of all search and rescue calls.

Most of those are reports of hikers who did not make it out of the woods when they were expected — though usually in that case the person is just late finishing their hike and is out of the woods and home by the next day, Bubier said.

Boaters are another group of people who the wardens get a lot of search and rescue calls for, he said. Boaters made up over 13.6% of search and rescue calls in the 2023 fiscal year. Many times boaters will get stranded and need help being towed off lakes.

There was an uptick in the number of search and rescue calls for hikers and boaters during the pandemic after stay-at-home orders were lifted, he said. Bubier surmises there was an influx of people wanting to get outside for recreation after being cooped up for several months.

Aside from boaters and hikers, other categories of missing people have fluctuated up and down over the past decade, with no significant increases, according to data collected by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

Wardens also commonly search for people who have a lowered cognitive ability or are in cognitive decline and wandered away from their home or family — including people who have health issues such as Alzheimer’s disease, he said. During the 2023 fiscal year, just over 6% of search and rescue calls were for people with Alzheimer’s.

Lost children made up many of the search and rescue calls in the past fiscal year, with roughly 13.6% of those calls, he said. Of all the search and rescue calls during the 2023 fiscal year, about 5% of them were for people with autism.

Bubier cannot say exactly how much time wardens spend on search and rescues because the service does not quantify that, he said, but it is a big part of their job.