PARIS: Can rats and people coexist? Paris city officials are attempting to find that out. Like many major cities, the French capital is notorious for rodents.
In order to examine “cohabitation”—the degree to which people and rats may coexist—Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo ias mulling over forming a committee, one of her deputies announced Thursday during a municipal council meeting.
Anne Souyris, the deputy mayor of Paris in charge of public health, announced the move in response to inquiries from Geoffroy Boulard, the head of Paris’ 17th arrondissement and a member of the center-right Republican party.
According to CNN, Boulard had urged the local administration to develop a more comprehensive strategy to combat the overpopulation of rats in public areas.
He has repeatedly criticised Hidalgo, a socialist party member from the center-left, for not doing more to get rid of rats in Paris, particularly earlier this year amid strikes that caused waste to accumulate all over the city.
“Rats on the surface are detrimental to Parisians’ quality of life,” according to Boulard.
Boulard said that he was asking the question after found the Project Armageddon research. Fighting stereotypes about rats to improve Parisians’ ability to coexist with them is one of the project’s goals in its effort to assist the city manage its rat population.
Despite the fact that the city of Paris is a partner in the initiative, the study is being funded by the French government.
What was being investigated, according to Souyris, was the degree to which people and rats might coexist in a fashion that was “the most efficient while at the same time ensure that it’s not unbearable for Parisians.”
Although rats may transmit disease, the deputy mayor clarified that the rats in question weren’t the same black rats that can spread the plague but rather different species that can transmit bacterial infections like leptospirosis. Thousands of new trash cans were purchased by the city as part of its 2017 anti-rat campaign, which Souyris said, in order to “make the rats go back underground.”
Later, Souyris claimed on Twitter that rats in Paris do not provide a “significant” risk to the public’s health. She continued by requesting input from the French High Council on Public Health.
She argued that rather than political news releases, we needed scientific counsel.
The city’s decision was applauded by the animal rights organisation Paris Animaux Zoopolis.
“Rats are present in Paris, as in all major French cities, so the question of cohabitation necessarily arises,” the organisation stated in a statement.
“At PAZ, we don’t mean living with rats in our homes or flats when we talk about “peaceful cohabitation” with them; rather, we mean making sure that they don’t suffer and that we aren’t disturbed. Again, a perfectly realistic purpose!”
