Editorial Policy
Oregon never wrote a single rule for a dead animal. There is a state carcass collection programme on the highways, a statute chapter titled Dead Animals that stops at domestic animals a keeper owned, salvage rules ODFW wrote for deer and elk, and four counties and cities that each answer the question differently. Pulling that into a single page is easy to get wrong, and the usual failure is not a fabricated rule. It is a real rule carried past the situation it was written for, or a neighbouring state's rule carried across the border. Everything that follows exists to keep that from happening here.
Which pages this governs
Anything that reports what an agency does or what a rule says: the guides, the FAQ, the resources list and the authority block on each city page. Service pages sit outside it. They describe the work for somebody still deciding whether to hire anyone, so they quote no statute and make no claim about an agency. Coverage and price are the two exceptions, and what this policy says about them applies to those pages unchanged. How a claim actually gets onto a page, step by step, is on the methodology page.
Which source wins
On any question of what the law actually requires, a rank-one source settles it over a rank-two, and a rank-two over a rank-three. A city page is first-rate evidence of what that city does on its own streets and no evidence at all of what the statutes say.
| Rank | Source | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Oregon Revised Statutes at oregonlegislature.gov; ODOT pages; the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife; the Oregon Department of Agriculture; county and city pages | Every statement about what a statute requires, or about what a state, county or city agency actually does |
| 2 | City public works, sanitation, engineering, health and 311 pages; municipal codes; county highway, sheriff and animal-services pages; county landfills | What one city or county does inside its own boundaries, quoted from the page that says it |
| 3 | Federal agencies such as the CDC | Handling and disease questions no state agency here has addressed |
Nothing on this site rests on another removal company's page, a directory profile, a review platform, a social post or a chatbot summary. Not one of those is evidence of what an agency requires, and none is quoted anywhere here.
How far a quote reaches
The source is open on screen while the sentence is written, and whichever line carries the weight is set inside quotation marks so it can be checked against the original. The harder discipline is scope. ORS 601.140 says "the carcass of any domestic animal, which the person has owned or had in charge", so its 15-hour deadline reaches a keeper of a cow or a dog and then stops; it is not quietly extended to the raccoon under the deck. ODOT's programme covers major state roadways, which makes it silent about a squirrel on a county road. Multnomah County's page reaches deceased cats, dogs and large wildlife "in public areas" and no further, and Eugene's collection is scoped to the city right-of-way, which it defines as streets, the kerb strip, parks and bike paths, so neither becomes a promise about a back yard. Where a county or city page states no fee at all, the word free does not appear here either, because an unstated charge and no charge are indistinguishable on a web page. And where ODFW recommends against moving a whole deer carcass outside the county the animal came from or one adjacent to it, that stays a recommendation, because calling it a ban would read better and would be false.
When an agency has published nothing
A blank is reported as a blank, with the pages that were opened to establish it. Several recur on this site. No Oregon statute we located puts a dead wild animal in a private yard on any agency: ORS 601.140 reaches the carcass of a domestic animal a person owned or had in charge, and nothing further was found. ODOT runs a carcass collection programme and still publishes no carcass-specific hotline, only the general Ask ODOT line. Whether an Oregon county holds a statutory power to remove from private property at public expense was not established either way, because the relevant ORS chapters were not read at section level, and that is recorded as unverified rather than as an absence. And a city can simply have nothing: Salem's urban pests and wildlife page covers mice, rats, feral cats and nutria without mentioning a dead animal, which is what we say here, in place of a rule imported from somewhere that does have one.
What this site will not claim about an operator
Coverage gets recorded one county at a time, and only once it has been confirmed directly with the operator by whoever runs this network. A service-area map on a company website or a directory listing is not confirmation of anything. Today not one Oregon county is confirmed, and every page that mentions an operator route says exactly that rather than hinting at a vehicle somewhere. Capability is handled the same way. Whether a given operator handles deer and elk, will enter a crawl space, or treats odour once the animal is out, is settled while you are on the line and never asserted in advance by a page. No operator reachable through this site cuts into finished drywall, plaster or a ceiling, so that case is written up as a situation rather than sold as a service. Price is missing for the same reason coverage is, which is that no rate on this site has been verified by anyone. Where a figure does appear in a guide or an answer, it is either a statutory penalty or a fee an agency published itself, and it is labelled and attributed as such.
How a correction reaches a page
Every guide carries the date its sources were opened and lists what was read to build it. A page gets reopened when a statute or rule is amended, when an agency rewrites the page a quote came from, when a reader reports an error, and otherwise on a quarterly sweep. Two subjects move faster than that sweep and are checked more often. Oregon's chronic wasting disease status, because the whole absence of a carcass regime here rests on it and all three neighbouring states have already lost it, and municipal collection practice, which changes without an announcement and is barely published to begin with. A reported error is traced back to the original source before anything on the page moves, and where the substance of a legal statement changes, the page records the change rather than quietly saying something new and letting you assume it always had. A link to a live agency page or a statute section that contradicts a line here is the fastest route to a fix: use the contact form, or the same line as everything else, (503) 213-6864.
Who pays for this site
Oregon Dead Animal Removal is a private advertising and call-routing business. It quotes agencies and holds no relationship with any of them, official or otherwise, and not one of them has reviewed a word of this. Revenue here depends on a single event, a householder finding an independent operator through these pages. It is the reason the tax-funded public route is printed first, and in full, wherever one exists. Burying that route to manufacture a paid call would leave a reader worse informed and this site with nothing worth citing. None of the actual job passes through this site. The operator holds the permit, the insurance and the disposal obligation, carries out the work and sets the figure. None of it is inspected here, and that is precisely why no page on this site calls an operator licensed, vetted or approved.
Accuracy and review
- Policy last reviewed
- Applies to
- The guides, the FAQ, the resources list, and the authority block on every city page