Should stray dogs be culled?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Should stray dogs be culled?". Your opponent's style: Aggressive and confrontational

Strays are public health hazard, cull them.

You're dead wrong - culling creates MORE disease, not less. When you slaughter stray populations, you create a vacuum that draws in diseased animals from surrounding areas who carry worse pathogens than the locals who've already built immunity. It's basic ecology.WHO explicitly states "Culling free roaming dogs is not effective in controlling rabies" [1]. Mass vaccination is 97% effective at stopping rabies transmission [2], while your slaughter approach just creates population turnover that brings in NEW infected animals from outside territories. Countries that switched from culling to vaccination saw dramatic drops in rabies cases - Sri Lanka achieved 97% vaccination coverage and eliminated canine rabies [3]. Meanwhile, places that keep killing dogs see the same disease patterns year after year because they're fighting symptoms, not the source. Your "public health" argument is backwards - healthy vaccinated stray populations create herd immunity barriers that protect humans. Kill them off, and you get a revolving door of unvaccinated replacements carrying whatever diseases are circulating in the broader region.

If you cull all the population, what diseased animals remain to come in carrying pathogens?

You're living in a fantasy if you think you can "cull all the population." Even Bali killed 200,000 dogs and the epidemic still rages on [1]. Your "total elimination" plan crashes against biological reality - dogs reproduce exponentially faster than any culling program can operate. Population rebounds immediately because you can't seal borders or stop migration. The population tends to rebound due to the remaining dogs reproducing and new dogs moving into the area [2]. Miss even 5% of the population and they'll repopulate the entire territory within two breeding cycles. The logistics alone destroy your argument - you'd need simultaneous, coordinated extermination across hundreds of square miles, involving every neighboring region. One missed pack, one pregnant female hiding under a porch, one dog wandering in from the next county, and your entire "solution" collapses. Meanwhile, you've created a biological vacuum that attracts diseased animals from surrounding areas who face no competition. Culling can disrupt the natural social structure of dog populations, potentially leading to increased aggression and higher risk of disease transmission [2]. Your plan isn't pest control - it's ecological chaos that makes the disease problem exponentially worse while burning through taxpayer money on an impossible mission.