in Marseille, the proliferation of gabians exasperates the city and the inhabitants

In Marseille, the gabian, a protected species of gull, is subject to an exemption from the prefecture to allow the town hall to regulate its presence and avoid nuisance.

It’s a bird that you can’t miss in the streets of Marseille. It is called the gabian and cohabitation with the inhabitants is not always easy. The Bouches-du-Rhône prefecture has just renewed its exemption to allow Marseille town hall to take measures to regulate its presence: capture, destruction of nests or sterilization of eggs, to avoid nuisance.

Around 24,000 yellow-legged gulls inhabit the harbor of Marseille, according to the town hall. This is the largest concentration of this species in Europe. The Gabians fly over the city or hang out near the trash cans and are part of the landscape for the people of Marseillais. “It represents the city, I love hearing them scream”, laughs a local resident. “They are thieves”laughs another. “They are absolutely not afraid, so they approach and boom it stings and they fly away,” adds a passerby. “They seem to be hyperaggressive”worries a resident. “We regularly see them eating rats, pigeons, says another. Onot we find some that are a little disembowelled, we know that it was the Gabians who passed through there.”

Impressive but not dangerous

With its 1.5 meter wingspan, the gabian can impress, especially when approaching the nests. But it is not dangerous. “When there are interactions, it remains a huge bluff for the birds, explains the legal mediator of the bird protection league, Anaël Marchas. There are picket attacks, there are screams, droppings which are the main problem. The cases where there are pecks, you can count them on the fingers of one hand.”

It details the measures that can be taken by the town hall to regulate the number of Gabians: “We can have the eggs sterilized: they are put in an oil bath to make their shell completely waterproof and stop the development of the embryo. We can have euthanasia in certain very specific cases, when we have birds who are injured in particular. We can make nesting sites inhospitable, stretch stainless steel cables on the roofs of buildings…”

The waste involved

Over the previous three years, the city of Marseille has already captured more than 700 gulls. A little less than half were euthanized, almost 180 eggs were destroyed. But to keep these birds away, you also have to collect the waste because they use it to make their nest or eat it.

“We call on citizens not to serve food to the Gabians,” calls out Jean-Yves Sayag, cleanliness delegate within the Aix Marseille metropolis. “A simple gesture: respect the times at which we take out our household waste. It’s at 7 p.m.! Whereas at 6 a.m., 7 a.m., people fill the container and then we’ll complain that there’s Gabians or other birds…” The Gabian is only “the reflection of our bad behavior”summarizes the bird protection league.