Skills keep rescuers on the right track

THE idea of tracking conjures up images of those old western films, with cowboy John Wayne yelling at Indian scouts to find which route the baddies took in their efforts to escape a silver-starred sheriff and other officers of the law.

Tracking is a special skill through which people and animals can be traced by using signs, generally footprints, they leave on the ground and in the surrounding environment.

Even in an age when forensic science, cameras, and helicopters, not to mention mobile phones and radio, are used to trace people in the wilderness, traditional tracking methods are still good to have.