PRESQUE ISLE, Maine — As a University of Maine at Presque Isle senior majoring in recreation and leisure services, Leah Finnemore sometimes spends several days at a time deep in the woods with fellow students.
When she takes those long trips, Finnemore feels ready for anything that could happen — such as the situation last fall when a classmate decided to take off on his own during a class trek through the Bigelow Mountain Range in Franklin County.
The classmate made it on his own to the group’s campsite, but the short time he was missing led the group to start thinking about what to do if he was truly lost.
“We thought, we feel superprepared and we have resources that will help us,” Finnemore said recently in the office of Anja Whittington, a UMPI assistant professor who is her adviser. “But we would have had to call in a search-and-rescue team if the situation had progressed.”
Most people who go outdoors consider search-and-rescue efforts to be a given, but the issue of who pays for such activities is much more complex, Finnemore said.
The Hartland native is conducting research and polling the public about who should pay for backcountry evacuations, a project Finnemore is doing through the Maine Policy Scholars Program.
The scholar program, which is funded by the Maine Community Foundation, provides students with a stipend to conduct research on a policy issue facing Maine and introduces students to the policy process.
The students’ final product is a report, in the form of a memo to the governor or other policymaker, outlining the issue, explaining data and recommending policy solutions. Students will present their findings April 9 in Augusta.v
Finnemore is one of seven scholars this year on University of Maine campuses.
It was Whittington who suggested Finnemore research the issue of backcountry evacuations in the wake of news-making rescues last summer, such as that of the allergic teenage girl who was stung by a bee in Gulf Hagas and an Eagle Scout who got lost in New Hampshire.
The Eagle Scout was fined more than $25,000 for his rescue under a New Hampshire law that allows lost hikers and climbers to be charged for rescue costs. The Scout was deemed negligent.
In the Gulf Hagas situation, the Maine Warden Service and rescuers from Brownville and Milo evacuated the girl, who had anti-allergy medication on hand but needed further attention. The operation’s price tag came to $2,514.
Both the warden service and Piscataquis County declined to pay for the girl’s ambulance ride. The town of Milo eventually absorbed the cost, said Town Manager Jeff Gahagan.
By law, said Maj. Gregory Sanborn of warden service, the state’s wardens are responsible for most inland search and rescue or evacuations, and the state absorbs the cost. Last year, for example, there were 482 instances of search-and-rescue — although not all needed the same level of attention — which cost about $298,000.
The state has the right, Sanborn said, to seek repayment from the individual involved in the evacuation if any false intentions can be determined.
For example, he said, if a woman reports her husband hasn’t returned from a snowmobile trip and the husband is found with another woman in a hotel, the state could seek repayment for its expenses.
Finnemore’s policy suggestion would mean implementation of a kind of insurance policy for those who know they’re going to be outdoors.
The insurance would come in the form of a card and would have a set cost — probably $20 or less, Finnemore said. Anyone who purchases the card would be free of responsibility for payment of a rescue operation.
“Basically if you don’t have this rescue card under the policy I’m proposing and you have to be rescued, you’re automatically billed whether they find you negligent or reckless,” Finnemore said.
It’s a similar system to one used in Colorado, she added.
Finnemore is conducting a survey through March 5 to gauge public support of the rescue card idea.
Maine Rep. Thomas Saviello of Wilton, who is a member of the Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Committee, introduced legislation last year supporting the creation of a so-called Maine Rescue Card, which people who hadn’t already purchased a DIF&W license for outdoor activities such as hunting or fishing could buy as insur-ance for backwoods evacuations.
Saviello said the goal was for those who might need to use the Maine Warden Service, but don’t already pay into the system through a license, to contribute in some way.
Saviello had suggested a price of $20 per card, and he envisioned getting sponsorship from some of the state’s major outdoor retail companies to offer a discount for cardholders.
The bill died in committee.
“People weren’t open to it,” Saviello said. “How do you get the general public, who takes advantage of the warden service which is there to help them, to be part of [paying into the system]? My idea would have done that, but I didn’t do a good enough job convincing them it was a good idea.”
As a Maine Policy Scholar, Finnemore would like to see her policy suggestion implemented at some point. Raising awareness of outdoor safety, however, is just as important to her.
“A lot of people don’t think about that,” Finnemore said. “They think, I’m in a state park or I’m in Acadia [National Park], nothing’s going to go wrong. But there are a lot of variables people don’t consider about how safety in the backcountry works.”
To participate in Finnemore’s survey, go to www.umpi.maine.edu/cgi-bin/remark5/rws5.pl?FORM=Leahssurvey.