VIVE LA FRANCE

Rats have rights: Vermin should be allowed to roam in Paris say protesters opposed to a cull

By Debbie White

Daily Mail
August 10, 2018

Animal rights campaigners are ratcheting up attempts to save rampaging rats from falling victim to more planned mass culls in Paris.

In June this year, Geoffrey Boulard, mayor of the 17th arrondissement in northwestern Paris, announced that residents could report rodents via an interactive map.

Taking the city authorities to task for failing to reduce the number of rats, he told Le Parisien: ‘The presence of rats in public space is worrying and has become more serious.

‘We had a crèche surrounded with rats dead and alive. Nobody is taking their responsibility. It’s a matter of public health.’

So, he launched the interactive map, to allow residents to ask for the intervention of municipal services – in the form of leaving poisoned bait and setting rat traps at sites where they are prolific.

It is estimated that Paris is home to around four million rats, a 1.8 rat-to-human ratio.

But pro-rat campaigners have been seeking a U-turn on such action, and have urged Boulard to have the rodents’ population reduced naturally, via the use of birth-control drugs as a humane alternative to extermination programmes.

There's even been an online petition, signed by 26,000 people, calling for a halt to the poisoning and trapping.

Its instigator, Jo Benchetrit, told the Wall Street Journal that she and fellow animal rights campaigners considered such methods as ‘cruel’.

A fellow campaigner, Claudine Duperret, 59, who has taken in 25 rats from the streets over the past 11 years, and is behind a Facebook page which seeks fellow rat-lovers to also ‘rescue’ rodents, told the WSJ: ‘We really need to find a balance to live together’.

On her Facebook page, ‘Save the Rats’, she and others share stories about their pets’ progress, including baby rats rescued from Parisian laboratories, which were under threat of being euthanised.

But, her attempt to tackle rat culls is a tricky one – in January this year Le Parisien published a shocking video showing scores of the creatures massing in a dustbin.

It was taken on the banks of the River Seine, in the centre of all the most popular tourist spots, including Notre Dame Cathedral and the Orsay art gallery.

A council worker said on the video that one of his colleagues ‘told me a rat jumped at his throat and another towards his arm… we shouldn’t be waiting for a tragedy.’

Paris launched a £1.4million extermination programme last September, with areas closed off during the killings, but it has by no means proved successful.