Roadkill, sick, and dead wildlife: the practical page

Avian influenza guidance changes seasonally — the don’t-touch advice below is durable; current case specifics live on the DNR and MDARD pages.

Hit a deer? You can keep it

Michigan’s roadkill salvage permit is free, online, and instant. (Police can issue them too.) The driver gets first claim; anyone may take an unclaimed animal with the permit. The rules that matter:

• The cannot-salvage list is specific: badger, bobcat, bear cubs, elk, moose, otter, fisher, marten, wolf, wild turkey, spotted fawns, and most migratory birds (ducks, geese, woodcock and kin). Those stay where they are — call the DNR.
• Intentional killing voids everything. A deer “accidentally” centered at speed is a crime, not a freezer plan.
• Disease-zone rules follow the carcass. In CWD surveillance areas, the same carcass-transport rules that bind hunters bind salvagers. Debone, clean the skull, don’t haul whole carcasses across the landscape.

Sick and dead wildlife: the reporting reflex

• A daylight-staggering raccoon, a too-tame fox: keep people and pets away, and report it — don’t “rescue.” Rabies is real in Michigan’s bat and skunk populations.
• Dead deer near water in late summer, especially several: that pattern suggests EHD, a midge-borne disease the DNR tracks through reports.
• Dead birds: don’t handle bare-handed. That goes double for waterfowl, raptors, or groups of three or more — the avian-influenza pattern. Current handling guidance lives on the DNR site. Backyard-flock illness goes to MDARD’s hotline (800-292-3939). For the single songbird by the window: a shovel, a bag, the trash, and washed hands is fine.
• The universal answer is Eyes in the Field — the DNR’s online reporting system for sick, dead, and unusual wildlife. Reports are literally how the agency sees disease moving across the map.

And the standing rule that covers everything here: don’t move carcasses around the landscape. Disease rules apply to dead animals as much as live ones.

The signpost

Salvage permits and the excluded-species list live at the DNR’s wildlife-permits pages; reports go to Eyes in the Field. Start with the wildlife rules pillar.