Rangers found pelicans on January 23 at the Djoudj bird sanctuary, a remote pocket of swamps near the Mauritanian border and a resting place for birds that cross the Sahara Desert into West Africa each year.
An unverified video published in the local media showed hundreds of pelican carcasses scattered on a beach, muddy and darker than its normally attractive white.
“We collected some samples for screening and we hope, in the near future, to know what caused the pelicans to die,” said Bocar Thiam, director of Senegal’s parks, in an interview.
The sanctuary is a transit location for some 350 species of birds, but only pelicans have been found dead, he said. Of the dead, 740 were young and 10 were adults.
Authorities closed the park and ordered the dead birds to be incinerated as a precaution.
This month, Senegal reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu on a poultry farm in the Thies region, about 120 miles south, resulting in the slaughter of some 100,000 chickens.