Chances are you’ve heard about the environmental impacts of free-roaming domestic cats — but that doesn’t mean our pooches are off the hook.

An Australian review of existing studies recently reported that pet dogs have a far more troubling impact on the environment than was recently known. The study calls out dogs as the large carnivore most commonly implicated in killing and disturbing native wildlife, especially shore birds. Indirect effects are rampant too, particularly involving dog waste, which affects soil chemistry and plant growth as well as leaving odors that scare off other animals.

These problems are easily remedied — if pooch parents would walk their dogs, leash them in restricted areas, keep them away from wildlife and pick up after them.