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Portola Valley 'bio side' subcommittee seeks better reporting for dead animals, discusses humane‑society partnership
Summary
A conservation subcommittee reported PB Connect undercounts dead-animal reports and discussed options including a dedicated web submission, promoting humane‑society contact information and outreach at the Sept. 19 town picnic; testing carcasses remains logistically unresolved.
The conservation committee’s rodenticide subcommittee, which has rebranded itself informally as the "bio side" group, described efforts to determine whether Portola Valley has a rodenticide problem and how the town should collect better data on dead or sick wildlife.
The subcommittee said it met twice since the last conservation meeting and interviewed Scott Weber in public works to learn how PB Connect flags and routes reports. "It appears from the data that we've seen from the humane society...there's actually quite a few more in Portola Valley than what Scott gets via PB Connect," a subcommittee member reported, noting the town’s reporting channel may undercount incidents.
Town Manager Darcy said the PB Connect mobile app is no longer supported and that the town is preparing to launch OpenGov. She recommended the committee promote the humane society’s contact information for wildlife concerns and highlighted that the humane society has a wildlife‑support team that can assist at town events. "We're launching this OpenGov software soon," Darcy said, adding staff prefer residents contact the humane society directly for wildlife matters in the near term.
Committee members pressed on whether carcasses can be tested for cause of death (to determine rodenticide exposure). The committee learned that most animals collected are not tested routinely and that the humane society does not necessarily document clinical signs such as mange in a way that would yield systematic data. Members discussed recruiting volunteers to transport specimens to laboratories such as UC Davis for testing, but logistics and resources remain unresolved.
The committee approved participating in the Sept. 19 town picnic and asked the subcommittee to prepare outreach materials, possibly in partnership with the humane society. No formal budget or new data‑collection protocol was approved.
The subcommittee said it will continue exploring options for a dedicated web submission to better capture dead‑animal reports and will avoid actions that would disproportionately increase staff workload without a plan for handling the additional reports.
