Our dogs love the outdoors, but the outdoors don’t love our dogs. A review of previously published studies, released in Pacific Conservation Biology, has found that pet dogs have a number of negative effects on the environment, from their disruption of wildlife to their contribution to the problems of pollution and climate change.
“Many owners simply don’t [realize] the environmental damage dogs can cause, from disturbing wildlife to polluting ecosystems,” said Bill Bateman, a review author and a behavioral ecologist at Curtin University in Australia, according to a press release. “However, the sheer number of pet dogs globally, combined with uninformed or lax [behaviors] by some owners, is driving environmental issues that we can no longer ignore.”
Read More: Why Taking Your Dog On A ‘Sniffari’ Will Tire Them Out More Than A Walk
The Environmental Effects of Dogs
There are around 1 billion dogs in the world today, and the benefits they bring are innumerable. From the companionship they offer to the mental and physical health improvements they provide, dogs make our lives better. But despite our love for them, they don’t typically make the lives of wild animals better — they typically make them worse — as dogs tend to disrupt wildlife both when they’re around and when they’re not.
When they’re outside, dogs bark and chase after animals, and when they’re indoors, they leave their traces behind, the review revealed.
“Dogs leave scents, urine and [feces], which can disrupt animal [behavior] long after the dogs have left,” Bateman said in the release.
Especially affected by the behaviors and the traces of our dogs are shorebirds, but other animals are impacted, too. “Studies have found that animals like deer, foxes, and bobcats in the [U.S.] are less active or completely avoid areas where dogs are regularly walked, even in the absence of the dogs,” Bateman added in the release.
In addition to their effects on wildlife, pet dogs also add to the problems of pollution and climate change, the review found.
“Dog waste also contributes to pollution in waterways and inhibits plant growth, while wash-off from chemical treatments used to clean and guard dogs from parasites can add toxic compounds to aquatic environments,” Bateman said in the release. “In addition, the pet food industry, driven by a vast global dog population, has a substantial carbon, land, and water footprint.”
Read More: Hiking With Your Dog Off-Leash Could Create Problems for Nature
Diminishing Your Dog’s Toll
These environmental burdens aren’t enough to ditch dog ownership entirely — and what could be? “Dogs are incredibly important to people’s lives, and their roles range from providing companionship to contributing to conservation efforts as detection dogs,” Bateman said in the release. However, the burdens are enough to warrant changes in the behaviors of individual dog owners.
In fact, there are things that you can do to reduce the environmental toll of your dog, and they’re relatively easy to implement. For instance, cleaning up after your dog can limit its disruption of wildlife, its pollution of waterways, and its inhibition of plant growth, while purchasing environmentally friendly dog food can curb the industry’s environmental footprint, restricting its contributions to climate change.
Some people “may feel their individual actions won’t make a difference, leading to a ‘tragedy of the commons’ where shared spaces like beaches and woodlands suffer cumulative degradation,” Bateman said in the release. However, they should recognize that their individual actions do matter, mitigating the negative environmental effects of their beloved pets.
Another way to reduce your dog’s toll is to follow all rules or restrictions about where dogs are and aren’t allowed. “Restrictive measures such as banning dogs from sensitive areas are necessary for protecting vulnerable species,” Bateman said in the release, “but they are not a complete solution.” Indeed, those bans aren’t enough to tackle dog ownership’s effects on the environment on their own, especially if dog owners tend to ignore them.
According to Bateman, we will only lower the environmental effects of our dogs by working together. “We are calling for a collaborative effort between dog owners, conservation groups, and policymakers to develop strategies that balance pet ownership with environmental care,” he said in the release. Though the solution will take effort, it will be worth the work, limiting the damage done by our best and furriest friends.
Read More: How Dogs Can Benefit Your Mental Health
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
Pacific Conservation Biology. Bad Dog? The Environmental Effects of Owned Dogs
Integrative and Comparative Biology. Dogs as Pets and Pests: Global Patterns of Canine Abundance, Activity, and Health
BioScience. The Ecological Paw Print of Companion Dogs and Cats
Sam Walters is a journalist covering archaeology, paleontology, ecology, and evolution for Discover, along with an assortment of other topics. Before joining the Discover team as an assistant editor in 2022, Sam studied journalism at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.
