When it comes to dogs and humans being invasive species, while the latter is considered the former is verified by such due to growing quantitative evidence about it. While it’s suspected for both of them (or perhaps either one of them), only the former’s ever rigourously studied for their impact on wildlife (via predation, pathogenesis and competition). It’s not that I dislike dogs, but the fact that humans have yet to be verified as such whereas dogs are reported as such in scientific studies.
There’s hard data for dog predation, enough to support the idea that they are an invasive species. In order for humans to be considered an invasive species, they have to be rigourously studied and quantified to understand how big their impact on the environment is. Honestly, I don’t think there are a lot of studies (as of yet) pointing out that humans are invasive the same way dogs are though that’s because I’ve read a lot of studies about dogs.
You need a lot of hard data to prove that humans are an invasive species, otherwise it feels like a misanthropic gotcha moment that derails any attempts at taking dog predation seriously. In the case with dogs, there were some studies (a few in Portuguese and English and some in Russian) proving that dogs are an invasive species but it took a 2017 study to verify and validate this suspicion. This has yet to be done with humans, even if it’s suspected.
The fact that dogs are scientifically regarded as the third worst invasive animal species after cats and rats says a lot about growing evidence about their dubious activities, whereas humans have yet to be regarded similarly. It’s not that they don’t do good for conservation, but when man’s best friend’s now increasingly regarded as an invasive pest whereas man himself has yet to be seen as such is telling when it comes to amounting evidence.
When there are far more studies about dogs negatively impacting the environment, calling dogs invasive holds far more water than calling people such since there’s just only one study (at this point) where humans did spread like an invasive species.
fynm 