Kill rats or keep them down the drain? The mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, criticized for the visibility of rodents in the capital, will set up a working group on the "cohabitation" with these animals, said Thursday, June 8 his deputy health. "The question of cohabitation arises," Anne Souyris said at the Paris council in response to a question from the LR mayor of the seventeenth arrondissement Geoffroy Boulard, who asked him for "a more ambitious plan to fight against the proliferation of rats". "We have decided, with the mayor, recently, to also make a committee on the issue of (...) this cohabitation", with the aim "to be both the most effective and to ensure that it is not unbearable for Parisians," said the elected ecologist.
The animal rights association Paris Animaux Zoopolis, which calls for "non-lethal methods", welcomed the announcement to AFP. Rats are "not a public health problem", cases of transmission of leptospirosis by bite can only concern garbage collectors, who can benefit from a vaccine, said Anne Souyris. However, "this does not mean that rats should be allowed to roam the city," she added, recalling the municipal plan put in place since 2017. In addition to the purchase of "thousands of new garbage cans" and lethal traps "when we can not do otherwise", the town hall also relies on "prevention" and "verbalization" of residents, because the abandonment of waste on the ground "is the major cause of the multiplication and externalization of rats", recalled the deputy.
An "abnormal, unjustified fear"
Geoffroy Boulard was moved that one of the objectives of a research project currently being conducted by the Museum of Natural History, the Pasteur Institute, VetAgro Sup and the Sorbonne, in conjunction with the town hall, is to "fight against prejudices to help Parisians better cohabit with rats". "The presence of these rodents on the surface harms the quality of life of Parisians" and the stay of the "44 million visitors" annually, he argued. The elected ecologist Douchka Markovic, who had provoked a debate in 2022 by asking to privilege the term "overmics", less pejorative according to her, stressed that they were "useful" in their ecosystem and denounced an "abnormal, unjustified fear" of rats.
