Rangers found the pelicans on Jan. 23 in the Djoudj Bird Sanctuary, a remote swamp area near the border with Mauritania and a resting place for birds that cross the Sahara Desert to West Africa every year.
An unverified video published to local media showed hundreds of pelican carcasses scattered around a beach, muddy and darker than their normally glaring whites.
“We took samples for screening and we hope to find out what caused the pelicans’ deaths in the near future,” said Bocar Thiam, Senegal’s Parks Director, in an interview.
The sanctuary is a transit point for about 350 bird species, but only pelicans were found dead, he said. Of the dead, 740 were young people and 10 adults.
Authorities have closed the park and ordered the burning of the dead birds as a precaution.
This month, Senegal reported an outbreak of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian flu at a poultry farm in the Thies region about 120 miles south, resulting in the culling of about 100,000 chickens.