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Dead Animal Removal in Clark County
Vancouver codifies a fifteen-pound ceiling on what you can bin, the county takes wildlife from county roads, and private property is the owner's.
Clark County sits across the river from Portland and handles this the way most of Washington does, with one useful difference: Vancouver has written the household-disposal limit into its municipal code rather than leaving it on a service page, so the line is unusually easy to check.
Who is responsible for what
| Situation | Who handles it | Terms |
|---|---|---|
| Private property | The property owner | State duty under WAC 246-203-121 within 72 hours |
| Wildlife on a county road | Clark County Public Works | Non-domestic animals on or along county roads |
| Domestic animal on a county road | Animal control | Domestic animals on county roads |
| Small animal disposal, Vancouver | The resident | City code treats a wrapped dead small animal under fifteen pounds as garbage |
| Camas | The property owner | City states its officers may not handle wildlife at all |
| State highway | WSDOT | Via Washington State Patrol or local law enforcement |
Doing it yourself here
Vancouver's municipal code defines garbage to include a plastic-wrapped dead small animal under fifteen pounds, which makes the household route explicit rather than implied. Above that, the county's solid waste plan describes rendering, incineration, composting and self-haul to a transfer facility as the acceptable routes, all of which the resident performs.
Where that leaves wildlife on private ground
Camas publishes the sharpest version of the limit in this county: federal and state laws do not allow its animal control officers to address, handle, relocate or otherwise interfere with any types of wildlife, and it names raccoon and opossum as examples. That is a clean statement that the wildlife carcass on your ground is not a municipal matter.
Questions about Clark County
Does the hauler collect dead animals?
Residential collection in much of Clark County is contracted to a private hauler, and the published bulky-item fee schedule carries no dead-animal line. A service delivered by a private hauler under municipal contract would in any case not be government removal, though it would still be an alternative worth knowing about.
Fifteen pounds again. Is that a state rule?
No. The recurrence is a coincidence of local practice rather than a state standard. Washington sets no statewide weight at which a carcass may go in a household cart, which is why King County, Spokane and Vancouver can all land near the same number without any of them citing the state.
What about Battle Ground and the smaller cities?
Nothing specific is published. They fall back to the countywide framework and the state duty on the property owner.
Sources for this page
- City of Camas, Animal Control · checked 22 September 2026
- Clark County Public Works · checked 22 September 2026