Madison County, IL Animal Ordinances: Wildlife Rescue Permits (2026)

048(A) requires that any private agency, organization, nuisance wildlife control operator or individual that picks up or confines a stray animal notify the public pound within 24 hours, so lost pets can be located through a central facility rather than destroyed. Division (B) requires a nuisance wildlife control operator or private organization confining a stray domestic animal to turn it over to the Administrator, and bars killing or abandoning stray animals outright, though organized return-to-field programs are carved out and not treated as abandonment. Division (D) requires every nuisance wildlife control operator doing business in the county to follow the state Humane Care for Animals Act and the state Animal Control Act.

Division (E) draws the operating line: these operators may pick up only wild animals, and are prohibited from picking up stray cats or dogs, which remain the Administrator's exclusive jurisdiction. Division (C) preserves a farmer's separate right to destroy an animal caught attacking livestock or poultry, a carve-out that sits outside the nuisance-wildlife-operator scheme. Together these provisions function as the county's licensing floor for wildlife control businesses operating in unincorporated Madison County: state licensing under the Humane Care and Animal Control Acts, a 24-hour notice duty to the pound, a no-kill/no-abandon rule, and a wild-animals-only lane that keeps operators out of domestic-animal calls that belong to Animal Care and Control.