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The ability to solve widespread coordination problems is... probably orthogonal to consciousness? Bees and ants do it without consciousness, and humans clearly suck at it. Or you could say: The odds of them being capable of using their sentience to solve their desire to have a controlled population level is small.

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Our population changed radically when we gained sentience.

I don't see how it is reasonable to assume a species will gain sentience and not alter their behaviour in a way that alters their population. That is a "big" threshold to cross in terms of ability to alter your surroundings.

It doesn't have to be controlled, it just has to change significantly because of the gain of sentience for this argument to not be valid.

“Bees and ants do it without consciousness” do they? Prove it.

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