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If you let them hunt prey for food and don't treat them when they're sick the population should be regulatable. Starving animals don't make a lot of babies and when population is normal starvation becomes rare. Animals exist in an ecosystem, having to fight with other prey and hunt/search for food means much less time making babies. The issue people have with this is tolerating the natural suffering (not intervening) , and allowing smaller animals to be hunted.

Think of it as a "dog conservation" area where dogs are allowed but predators that kill dog are not and prey dogs can hunt is introduced but not heavily regulated.

The part humans have a hard time with is allowing animals to suffer naturally. But out in nature, natural animal suffering is very common. That's how animal populations self regulate. They say dogs can't survive in the wild, that's partly true because most natural ecosystems have predators that will hunt them and prey that are hard to catch for dogs. But there are prey dogs can catch easily like rabbits that are in many areas (like farms) considered pests. Now imagine a dog conseravation area near rabbit infestes areas instead of pesticides! And imagine adapting dogs from these areas instead of kill shelters.

We humans have the power to craft ecosystems and plenty of unused and unfarmable and hard to develop wild land our pets would love (e.g.: much of oregon).

But even if that wasn't possible, my view is that allowing city dogs to starve is natural, you can feed them excess foods and they will reproduce then, but at some point there won't be enough food for the little ones to sustain them so that would be nature's way of regulating them.

And if you step back a bit for perspective. Humans have the same problem. Not that we humans should let each other starve but people who can't feed their children can avoid prefnancy at will and avert that suffering while animals aren't smart enough to do that.

Humans in the end are not in charge of regulating the natural fate of animals.




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