Dogs Responsible for Wildlife Predation and Extinctions

A dog’s bite is worse than its bark, as far as wildlife conservationists are concerned. Several recent studies have documented the large numbers of wild animals that domestic and feral dogs have killed.

Researchers in Australia, led by Tim Doherty of Deakin University, found that kills by dogs threatened 156 species worldwide and led to the extinction of approximately ten species. A Polish research group found that in Poland alone, dogs were responsible for killing more than 33,000 wild animals per year.

Man’s best friend is not nature’s number one enemy: both cats and rodents kill more wild animals per year than dogs. Still, dogs threaten global biodiversity more than other carnivores such as pigs, mongooses, red foxes, and stoats by preying heavily on common animals like hares and deer. And because people have brought dogs with them wherever they go, their effects on wildlife are global, not just regional as in Poland.

The owners whose dogs kill wildlife “are not responsible and not punished for their dogs being outside homesteads,” said Izabela Wierzbowska of Jagiellonian University, lead author of the Polish paper. She said that her government has failed to enforce pet management or control feral dog populations.

Feral dogs endanger not only prey animals, but also people and wild carnivores. With predatory instincts intact but fear of humans gone, feral dogs sometimes bite people. Along with causing injuries, dogs can infect both humans and endangered animals with deadly diseases. Furthermore, dogs compete for prey with other predators like wolves, sometimes causing the wild carnivores to hunt at different times of day to avoid direct conflict.

Finding evidence of the scope of predation by dogs has not been easy, Wierzbowska said. She hopes that this research will lead to stricter laws on eliminating feral populations and not letting domestic dogs roam wild.

Image credit: “Hunting” by Ryan Mcdonald is licensed under CC BY 2.0