WHAT IS A NYS FOREST RANGER?
NYS Forest Rangers play three major roles in the state which include public land protection, search & rescue and wildland fire suppression.
Search & Rescue
NYS Forest Rangers are the State’s lead agency for all backcountry search and rescue. Rangers primarily respond to searches and rescues on the 6 million acres of DEC State land they patrol, however they also respond anywhere in the state with their expertise. All Rangers are wilderness first responders who specialize in extracting subjects from the backcountry and providing patient care when transport to a hospital is delayed by hours or days.
Some of the other SAR disciplines that Rangers are proficient in include: technical rope rescue, helicopter hoist rescue, swift water rescue and airboat rescue operations.
Wildland Fire
NYS Forest Rangers’ history began in 1885 as ‘fire patrolmen’ with the Forest Commission. At that time their only responsibility was forest fire prevention and suppression.
In 1912 they took on the new name of Forest Rangers and with the new name also came new duties which included law enforcement and search and rescue.
Today NYS Forest Rangers respond to hundreds of wildfires each year and are the State’s authority on wildland fire suppression, investigation and prevention. Forest Rangers deploy across the country and even internationally to assist with large scale fire incidents as initial attack hand crews or single resource experts. They also participate in and orchestrate prescribed burns in state.
Public Land Protection
Forest Rangers are tasked with the care, custody and control of state land in New York. To that end Rangers are assigned geographic areas of responsibility to learn and patrol. They are expected to have a deep knowledge of their assigned area as well as neighboring ones. They are sworn police officers capable of enforcing any law within the State. Their main focus is on laws that protect the resource, the wild lands owned and managed by the DEC and to be knowledgeable and proficient in all public use of that land. Rangers often bridge the gap between law enforcement and search and rescue to assist other police agencies with missing person cases, fugitive searches and evidence searches.
