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.”
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