On Thu, Sep 13, 2007 at 11:23:57AM +1000, Chris Sanderson wrote:
> I think those defending dog walking are missing the point of the original
> research. The claim wasn't that any individual outing caused harm
> specifically. The research was showing that, over the course of time, birds
> were less likely to use an area that dogs had been walked through.
No, the research looked at transient effects. They surveyed birds over a
250m transect 10 minutes after the treatment. The treatment was either
walker(s), walker+dogs on leads or nothing (control). They used 90
sites in the "urban fringe woodland of the Hornsby-Berowra-Cowan region".
Some sites were frequented by dog walkers (in theory leash-only) and
at some of their dog walking was not normally permitted. They also
compared 2 humans to human+dogs. In all cases they found significant
extra disturbance from leashed dogs.
They did not examine effects beyond 10 minutes, but they note there was
no difference in bird diversity or abundance between the areas where
dogs were permitted & dogs not permitted suggesting little long-term
effect from dog-walking in this region.
A well-controlled experiment (like this) looking at long-term effects
of dog walking would be a lot of work.
Andrew
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