Here's a fun twist:

About 10yrs ago, I started to see a HUGE surge of feral cats in our area. There were dozens of cats showing up that none of my neighbors or I had any idea where they came from.

Our inital thought was that they were simply feral cats that were for some reason surviving better that year.

Then every farm/ranch within miles had ringworm pop up in horses and cattle, rabbit populations dropped off, cats were getting into EVERYONE's garages, sheds, etc etc. So farmers/ranchers started clearing out feral cats.

But more and more kept coming, we made a concerted effort to kill them off, as the ringworm deal was getting way out of hand, but we just couldn't get ahead of it.

Then we figured out what was going on. A gal that lived nearby worked at a county humane society shelter. Rather than destroying cats that weren't adopted, she was turning them loose out in the country, unknowingly causing all of our problems.

We confronted her, let her know she was causing issues, told her that what she was doing was illegal, and let her know what WE were doing to mitigate the problems she was causing, and she did stop. Everything basically came back to normal.

There's a difference between shooting an invasive species (feral cats, hogs, pythons in the glades, frogs, rabbits in australia, etc et), and shooting someone's pet.

If I see a collared animal, I try to get it to come to me, as it's clearly a pet. If it comes, I make some phone calls, and try to figure out who owns it. We've picked up a few farm dogs that nobody claimed and I didn't want to see destroyed at the animal shelter.

If a collared animal doesn't come, then I let it walk, occasionally even set out a live trap with some food trying to capture it. Make some phone calls to neighbors to see if they know whose dog it might be.

I know most of my neighbors dogs.

If a collared dog is caught in the act of killing one of my livestock, if I KNOW the dog, I might give my neighbor the benefit of the doubt to compensate me for the livestock once, and I warn them that I will protect my livestock if they don't do better to restrain their animal. Having my neighbors dog chase my horses around is one thing, I can live with that. Having a neighbors dog kill 10 goats in a summer because they can't keep it on a leash is another thing. No two free passes.

If a non-collared animal, or an animal that I don't recognize is in the act of harrassing/killing my livestock, it's dead. Period.

If feral dogs or feral cats become an issue, then all of my neighbors and I generally agree that they need to be dealt with, and we do.

There have been times where we didn't mind feral dogs running around. One of the neighbors dogs ran off, and never would stay home even if any of us caught it, but it never did any harm. Her name was Bob, because my neighbors Son liked the name and didn't realize Bob was a boys name and the dog was a girl. Bob ran wild for a while, was very friendly, but would never stay put whenever we caught her. Eventually, we started seeing pups running with her, which we all started calling "Bob" also. The neighbor lady always left food out for them, but they'd span about a 10mi radius between all of our farms. About the 3rd or fourth generation of "bob pups" (maybe 5-6yrs later) started getting a little wiley and would tear down goats and sheep, so we had to clean them up, but the first few batches seemed to be "respectful" and never caused any issues, so all of us local farmers/ranchers agreed: live and let live.