Scoping review of indicators and methods of measurement used to evaluate the impact of dog population management interventions

Abstract

BackgroundDogs are ubiquitous in human society and attempts to manage their populations are common to most countries. Managing dog populations is achieved through a range of interventions to suit the dog population dynamics and dog ownership characteristics of the location, with a number of potential impacts or goals in mind. Impact assessment provides the opportunity for interventions to identify areas of inefficiencies for improvement and build evidence of positive change.MethodsThis scoping review collates 26 studies that have assessed the impacts of dog population management interventions.ResultsIt reports the use of 29 indicators of change under 8 categories of impact and describes variation in the methods used to measure these indicators.ConclusionThe relatively few published examples of impact assessment in dog population management suggest this field is in its infancy; however this review highlights those notable exceptions. By describing those indicators and methods of measurement that have been reported thus far, and apparent barriers to efficient assessment, this review aims to support and direct future impact assessment.

Desexing Dogs: A Review of the Current Literature

“…Starting in North America during the 1970s, concerns about pet overpopulation and implementing population control measures have historically been at the forefront of desexing advocacy originating from both the veterinary profession and the shelter community, focusing on both animal welfare and public health aspects associated with free-roaming dogs [71][72][73][74][75]. However, considering both the substantial body of literature advocating in favor of desexing as a means of population control and the widespread use of desexing in shelters and by private practice veterinarians over the last 40-50 years [3,13,14,76-79], the body of evidence investigating the effectiveness of desexing to actually achieve population control in companion and shelter dogs is surprisingly slim [80,81], and the evidence from such studies does not generally support the existence of an effect of desexing programs on population control, as discussed below.…”

The Effectiveness of Dog Population Management: A Systematic Review

“…Our systematic review found that dog population management is conducted in many countries globally [15,16], carried out by different groups (e.g., researchers and animal welfare or government agencies), applying different methods to different populations types (restricted and unrestricted) and using different indicators to monitor the impact of the intervention. It is therefore difficult to synthesise the evidence base and assess the true impact of dog population management techniques [3,16], despite the quantity of work being conducted. Very few of the reviewed studies allowed robust conclusions to be drawn.…”

“…Where free-roaming dogs exist in high densities, they can be considered an issue in terms of public health (e.g., transmission of rabies and other zoonotic pathogens) [5][6][7], the environment (e.g., threatening the survival of wildlife) [8][9][10], and the animals' welfare state [2,[11][12][13]. Population management therefore typically focusses on free-roaming dogs [14] to control the population size and-depending on the approach taken-to improve dog health and welfare and mitigate against public health and environmental problems [15,16].…”

“…Reporting quality was assessed based on guidelines from Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) [78] and Animals in Research: Reporting In Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) [79]. For the final corpus, we assessed quality based on: study design, reporting of aims/hypotheses, appropriate study outcome (as defined by [16]), and definition of study population. Study populations were classified into: (i) unowned, free-roaming; (ii) owned, free-roaming; (iii) unowned, restricted; (iv) owned restricted; (v) undefined (i.e., the paper did not report which population was under investigation); or a combination of the five categories.…”

“…All papers in the final corpus reported their aims, with the majority aiming to understand the impact of dog population management as a primary objective and others describing methods of dog population estimation, model development, and guideline development. All papers in the final corpus used an appropriate outcome to measure the effect of dog population management (as defined by Hiby et al (2017) [16]). In the observational/intervention studies, 35% of papers did not report the management coverage and 9% did not report the length of management ( Table 2).…”