Dead Animal Removal Services in the GTA

Your local municipal government will not pick up dead animals if they are located on private property – this is the responsibility of the home owner. If you come across a dead animal on the road in front of your house, in a park or on other public property, note the type of animal it is and the precise location and call your local city. They’ll send out animal control to pick it up.

The dead animal removal services that we offer are paid services, so please call your local municipal government if you come across a dead animal on public property. If the dead animal is on your private property, give us a call, we’d love to help!

In most cases, you probably won’t want to keep any dead animals that you find. A dead skunk, raccoon, or opossum doesn’t have much financial or sentimental value. However, some people might want to keep a dead animal they come across for whatever reason. For the most part, you can keep a dead animal if you choose to, but there are laws, rules and exceptions.

In Ontario, you are required to register that you have and are keeping dead animals such as large mammals (i.e. a black bear), birds of prey (i.e. a bald eagle) or furbearing mammals (i.e. a coyote). Special rules and exceptions apply to endangered species. For more information, check out the Keep a Dead Animal page on the Ontario government website.

Animals don’t understand roads and cars like humans do. To an animal, running across a road is no different than running in a field or forest, except it’s harder and smoother. In areas where there are a lot of development of previously natural areas – think new housing developments being built on the edge of suburban areas – animals aren’t used to fast cars driving along roads. However, in areas where there are natural areas in regions of mature development, animals become aware of human activity and understand that things like cars are dangerous.

It’s really difficult to tell how many dead animals are collected in the GTA each year because these are exactly the most interesting or glamorous tidbits of information to be publicizing. However, an article on the Toronto Metro website cited that in 2012, Toronto Animal Services responded to 7,500 cases. Given that the outlying areas of the GTA are more prone to wild animals and pests because they’re closer to and contain more natural areas, we’re guessing that each municipality deals with more than 10,000 cases per year. And that’s just dead animals found on public property – we imagine homeowners remove and pay for dead animal removal on tens of thousands more dead animals each year.