The fate of Ratatouille soon sealed? The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, criticized for the visibility of rodents in the capital, will set up a working group on “cohabitation” with these animals, her health assistant said on Thursday. “The question of cohabitation arises,” said Anne Souyris during the Paris Council in response to a question from the mayor of the 17th arrondissement, Geoffroy Boulard, who asked her for “a more ambitious plan to fight against the proliferation of rats”.
“We decided, with the Mayor, recently, to also form a committee on the question of […] this cohabitation”, with the objective “to be both the most effective and to ensure that it is not unbearable for the Parisians”, declared the elected ecologist. The Paris Animals Zoopolis animal rights association, which calls for “non-lethal methods”, welcomed this announcement.
Rats are “not a public health problem”, the cases of transmission of leptospirosis by bite can only concern garbage collectors, who can benefit from a vaccine, said the deputy. However, “that does not mean that the rats should be allowed to roam the city”, she added, recalling the municipal plan put in place since 2017.
Thousands of new trash cans and lethal traps coming soon
In addition to the purchase of “thousands of new trash cans” and lethal traps “when you can’t do otherwise”, the town hall also relies on “prevention” and “verbalization” of the inhabitants, because the abandonment of waste on the ground “is the major cause of the multiplication and exteriorization of rats”, recalled Anne Souyris.
Geoffroy Boulard was moved that one of the objectives of a research project currently being carried out by the Muséum d’histoire naturelle, the Institut Pasteur, VetAgro Sup and the Sorbonne, in conjunction with the town hall, is to “fight against prejudices to help Parisians live better 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 environmentalist Douchka Markovic, who had provoked a debate in 2022 by asking to favor the term “row rats”, less pejorative according to her, underlined that they were “useful” in their ecosystem and denounced an “abnormal, unjustified fear” some rats.