Dead seagulls along the Ourcq canal: the mystery still hangs

Definitely, the mystery hovers around the sudden death of “several dozen seagulls”, according to passers-by, whose corpses were found on Saturday December 3 along the Ourcq canal, on the edge of Pantin, in Bobigny.

The city of Paris, owner of the canal, and the prefecture of Seine-Saint-Denis indicate, this Thursday, that additional analyzes will be carried out to find what killed these palmipeds.

“It will take several weeks”, specifies the town hall of Paris, adding that the first tests carried out last week made it possible to evacuate the explanation of deaths caused by the bird flu or a bacterium.

This Saturday, December 3, the birds had apparently fallen like arrows under the astonished eyes of passers-by.

“I was walking along the canal, near the technical center of the SNCF, when I smelled a very strong smell, told us Adèle.

I looked up, then I saw at least thirty seagulls lying on the banks or in the canal.

They were dead.

A lady told me that they had just fallen one after the other.

I quickly turned back, because the smell was unbearable.

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A rather industrial sector

According to a police source, the river brigade, alerted by the firefighters, had picked up 16 deceased birds in the process.

Agents from the French Office for Biodiversity – which has 1,600 inspectors working within the environmental police – and the town hall of Paris

had also collected, on Sunday, the corpses of seagulls which were analyzed.

This incident had worried people frequenting this rather industrial sector, which notably houses an Eqiom concrete plant and the SNCF technicentre.

For the moment, no official track has been advanced by the authorities.

"A communication will be made once all the results of the analyzes are known", specifies the prefecture.

The Ile-de-France Bird Protection League, which had taken up the case, indicates for its part that it has had no additional information.