You actually want the sterilized strays to remain so that they put pressure on the resources that would otherwise feed the unsterilized strays. That suppresses the stray population even further.
To play devil's advocate here, I do think that human sensibilities about life preservation can be inconsistent and illogical.
Your comment itself is contradictory is it not? If I am to understand "Also, wtf?" to mean something like "euthanising dogs is immoral because it shortens their life", your other argument is that sterilisation is superior because it essentially starves the other dogs. How is starvation morally superior to euthanasia?
Caveat: I actually also have the same emotional knee-jerk response. I own and love a dog very dearly, and the idea of just "getting rid of all the dogs" doesn't sit well with me.
It doesn't necessarily directly starve the other dogs, they'll have less energy to attempt to reproduce with. It's not an attempt to increase the death rate as much as it is an attempt to decrease the birth rate.
I think these things usually come down to perceptions of human intervention as basically bad. If you actually witnessed the death of every individual dog in your scenario as compared with euthanasia, it's not clear that it would be more pleasant at all. These dogs will die diseased and malnourished by the roadside. Again, I am not really at odds with your emotional position, I'm just interested in the moral foundations on which we sit, if that makes sense at all.
If I may make an attempt at the moral underpinning, it is something like "survival as intrinsic worth". There are flaws to this position, as with any.
Setting aside the fact that I'd be witness to less deaths because I've chosen a more effective protocol for population control, I think letting them live out their lives isn't a net negative. Why would I expend energy ending lives if they don't impact mine?
Granted, there are times when euthanasia would be necessary. For example, feral dog populations in areas where the vulture population has died off, where they carry disease and attack passersby and the supply of food is basically uncontrollable, I get it. But that's a case I personally would preemptively qualify if I were considering it.
In countries with well-managed stray dog populations, people actually feed them, and they get rid of carcasses and other leftovers on the street. Their life might be harsh, but not entirely unpleasant. In countries with unmanaged populations, people will be harsh towards them and mistreat them. And they will also be more aggressive towards humans in return.
If a government had a goal to prevent humans from reproducing and forcibly sterilized and cynically used the population they could reach to pressure and control the population they couldn't, it would be called genocide.
A lot of families around the world aren't able to have the number of children they'd prefer to have. There's a lot of reasons for it many of which come down to people not having enough money for a family. Lack of affordable housing and childcare are big ones. Uncertainty about the security of our future is another. If a government did want to prevent humans from reproducing, they've got a pretty good head start and plenty of examples of what to do more of.
You want packs of stray dingo dogs running around your kids and your homes? I see no value in that. Seems more intuitive for the community at large to use a shelter-system...When I was ten or eleven I nearly got mauled by a seventy pound stray dog that was fighting my neighbors dog. Would have made no difference had that thing been vaccinated.
This is exactly why stray dogs shouldn't be allowed to exist. They're a threat to the community. We don't have them at all here in Japan, as far as I can tell; we do have real wild animals, like bears and boars, that sometimes threaten and attack people, but that's normally only in rural places, and those are actual wild animals, not feral pets or invasive species. We also have stray cats, but while one might argue those are a threat to some native animal species like birds, they're certainly not a threat to humans.
Who funds the shelter system, and where do the dogs end up?
It's hard for a small municipality with a stray problem to justify a facility that is entirely dedicated to the bureaucracy of scheduled death. This is a tale as old as time and the end result is not a happy one.
The term "kill shelter" is much more common than "shelter" because by nature a shelter is temporary housing before euthanization resources are available/confirmed.
If the suppression from competition is having an effect, then you’ll have dogs dying in random places from malnourishment. You might also have more aggressive dogs as the hungrier an animal is, the greater risks it will take to feed.
Directly euthanizing them would definitely be more effective. Reality is just too grim for some people to admit.
The populations will just rebound unless you really manage to euthanize all of them. Sterilizing and vaccinating takes care of the problem.
Unless the problem really got out of hand, it's not just "some people" who oppose a total cull. Even if people silently approve of the cull, one will find much less volunteers for such an effort than for a large-scale sterilization and vaccination program.
Why "wtf?" They don't have stray dogs everywhere. They don't exist here in Japan; any stray dogs are seized, and presumably euthanized. Why have nuisance animals roaming around that cause a lot of problems and attack people? Do you think it's somehow a good thing to have stray dogs? wtf?
Also, wtf?