Availability of predictable food through garbage and intentional feeding linked to India’s street-dog population: Study

A new study on the Indian street dog states that “food subsidies” — availability of abundant, predictable food through garbage and intentional feeding — have an impact on their population in the country’s urban ecosystems.

The study, titled ‘The Indian street dog crisis and multi-species coexistence in tropical urban futures’, conducted by Nishant Kumar, a DBT/Wellcome Trust India Alliance Fellow at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), said that abundant and predictable food through garbage and the intentional feeding provided to free-ranging dogs influences their population.

New perspective

NCBS said that while India’s street-dog crisis is often framed as a problem of animal population control, Mr. Kumar’s study published in Nature Cities offers a new perspective as he argues that the driver lies in how Indian cities provide free-ranging dogs with abundant and predictable food through garbage and intentional feeding.

“These food subsidies influence not just dog numbers, but where dogs congregate, how they move, reproduce and defend territories, and where conflicts with people are likely to occur,” NCBS said.

It added that dogs have historically played a role in urban ecosystems by scavenging human waste.

Rapid urbanisation

“Rapid urbanisation, however, has transformed this relationship. Growing quantities of food waste, concentrated feeding sites, and changing urban infrastructure now create resource-rich environments for free-ranging dogs, while restricting their movement through roads, buildings, and other built structures,” it added.

Mr. Kumar further said that interventions such as sterilisation, vaccination, removal or fencing alone may have limited success without a simultaneous addressal of the demographic driver, which is food subsidies.

“The consequences extend beyond dog-human conflict. Free-ranging dogs can prey on wildlife, compete with native scavengers and mesopredators, and transmit pathogens to wild carnivores. India also bears a substantial burden of dog bites and rabies, and dog counts and bite statistics reveal little about the ecological processes sustaining these populations,” he said.

No corresponding responsibility

The study added that sterilisation, shelters, fencing or removals cannot succeed when urban landscapes provide food subsidies to animals without corresponding responsibility.

The study calls for a shift from reactive dog control to multispecies coexistence and says that this would require public health, veterinary services, waste management, urban planning, and conservation agencies to work together, supported by long-term data on dog populations, movement, reproduction, mortality, and behaviour.