A theme song by The Who blasts through the hallways. Are we in Las Vegas, Miami or New York? Lethbridge College actually, and there really isn’t a theme song, but this wildlife crime scene investigation seminar is certainly worthy of one.
For the first time in Canada, 25 fish and wildlife enforcement officers received training on wildlife field forensics: cutting-edge information that has never been available to them before. The value of this education for Canada’s fish and wildlife enforcement officers cannot be understated, and in August, Lethbridge College played host to the significant event.
Allan Orr, environmental science instructor at Lethbridge College, was responsible for bringing it to Canada. After witnessing the wildlife field forensics seminar firsthand in Montana last year, he knew he had to bring it here. “We are giving Canadian officers access to training that was never available before,” he says. “I just felt the provincial officers, certainly ones in western Canada in particular, could use this training. Having been one myself, I knew there was a need for it.”
What do officers actually do at wildlife crime scenes? In the real world, it’s very similar to what police do when they investigate a murder. The officers are trying to connect a dead animal on the ground to the weapon used to kill it to the person who pulled the trigger. These three elements come together for a successful outcome or prosecution. Officers collect evidence and have experts in labs analyze it. They collect things like bullets, casings and cigarette butts, and they take castings of tire tracks.
Sending evidence to labs can be a time-consuming process. Until recently this was just the way it was done. Orr says, contrary to most of the forensics training that exists, the wildlife field forensics training shows officers how to do things in the field, not the lab. “Right now there is such an ability gap between the field officers and the scientist that we’re really just trying to close that gap a bit,” he says. Wildlife officers can do a lot of forensics work themselves right in the field, but not to the point they’d be considered experts in court. “We want them to be experts in the field,” says Orr.
For example, if a field officer finds a bullet, he can look at it with a simple 10-power handheld lens and compare it to a rifle. The officer can identify basic characteristics of commonality. He can use the information to start interviewing witnesses and potential suspects in hopes of getting a confession. Orr says, “We’re not looking at getting information that specifically convicts people or puts them in jail. We’re getting info that gives us reasonable and probable grounds to get a search warrant or to take a statement from somebody and then get further information to carry on with the investigation.”
The evidence is still sent to a lab because the experts will need to confirm the findings in court, but at least the field officer can keep the momentum of the investigation going. It’s more efficient and cost effective. Part of this conference trained officers to be better and more efficient at collecting evidence for submission to the labs. In most cases, this leads to better information being returned to the officer more quickly than in the past.
