Hundreds of millions of stray dogs live in urban environments worldwide. Managing their populations humanely while protecting dog and human welfare requires evidence-based approaches.
Stray dogs experience profound welfare deprivation: chronic hunger, injury, disease, parasites, and extreme weather exposure are common. Injuries from road traffic, dog fights, and human persecution compound their suffering. In many countries, mass culling — often using cruel methods including shooting, poisoning, and electrocution — is the primary response to stray dogs, inflicting enormous suffering while failing to solve the underlying population problem. Dogs with human socialization may suffer psychologically from loss of home environment. Effective humane population management requires community engagement, sterilization and vaccination infrastructure, and addressing the supply of dogs through responsible breeding regulation.