EDMONTON — Edmonton police are teaming up with Canada’s only human decomposition facility, commonly referred to as a body farm, to gather information on how human remains are scavenged by animals.
The study aims to discoverer which parts of human remains are most often scavenged and scattered by wildlife specific to the Edmonton area.
“To assist us to better search for those remains, particularly with the canine unit,” said Shari Forbes, the director of a human body farm in Quebec. “So that we know how far we should be searching, what patterns to look for and, hopefully, increase our success of recovering human remains.”
Scavengers in and around the city include ravens, vultures, coyotes, cougars, lynxes and black bears, according to Forbes.
The project in Edmonton will use pig remains in two locations, one within city limits and one in a more rural area. Pig remains are used since the body farm is in Quebec, and pigs are considered to be the “next best model in terms of decomposition,” according to Forbes.
“They have skin with hair, similar biomass… and from what we know they decompose similarly and are scavenged in a similar pattern to human remains,” she added.
The locations are chosen to be as far from people as possible, to avoid interference from the public, but also so as not to actively encourage scavengers. The group wants to create as natural and realistic a scenario as possible.
One unique feature to both Edmonton and Calgary is their river valleys, which are being incorporated into the study.
The remains will be monitored with hunting cameras and once they have been scavenged and scattered, a team will be sent in to recover the remains and gather information.
“That’s really the challenge, how to find those remains if we don’t understand where they’ve gone, how far they’ve gone, which direction they’ve gone, that’s what we’re really trying to understand,” said Forbes.
“This will help us improve our searches for human remains, which ultimately allows us to recover the deceased, gather evidence for our investigations and hopefully, bring some degree of resolution to the families of the deceased,” said Staff Sgt. Paul Shafer, with the EPS Canine Unit, in a press release.
The program has been run in Quebec and Ontario, and is also being done in other places across the country, including Calgary.
According to Forbes, police in Ontario have already been able to put lessons they have learned into practice. One of the things they learned, was that police need to increase the ranges of their search areas.
“The information that we’re getting through Dr. Forbes is going to be invaluable,” said Const. Dennis Dalziel, the detection dog trainer with the EPS Canine Unit.
“You try to cover as much as you can in a training environment, but at the end of the day, when you get to an operation, we don’t dictate where the remains are going to be.”
This is the first program being run in the Edmonton area, but Forbes said they plan to do more in the fall, spring and in years ahead, as the seasons affect decompositions and scavengers. In summer, they have seen remains be scavenged in less than a week, but in winter it can take months.
Forbes expects that after a couple years, they will be able to see trends in animal behaviours.
The information from the study will be shared as it progresses, and will be available to police agencies across the country.
EPS retired one human remains detection dog in 2020 and another is currently being trained.
