Imagine walking through a London park and spotting the elegant silhouette of a white stork soaring above. Once extinct in Britain, this iconic bird could soon return to the capital’s skies thanks to a bold new rewilding initiative.
Earlier this week, Citizen Zoo announced a groundbreaking project to explore the reintroduction of white storks to London. Building on the success of the White Stork Project in Sussex, where the birds bred in the wild for the first time in centuries in 2020, the team is now mapping potential habitats across the capital and inviting Londoners to help shape the future of this extraordinary comeback.
The Return of a Lost Icon
White storks once nested across Britain, but habitat loss and human persecution led to their disappearance over 600 years ago. Today, however, the tides are turning.
Thanks to efforts by rewilding pioneers, white storks are making a tentative return - first in Sussex, and now potentially in urban London. These majestic birds, often symbols of new beginnings, could soon become ambassadors for a new kind of urban ecology: one where people and wildlife coexist in the heart of our cities.
A Citizen-Led Vision
What makes this project special is its community-first approach. Rather than releasing birds and hoping for the best, Citizen Zoo is taking time to:
Survey Londoners for their views
Map out suitable habitats across boroughs
Engage with local councils and landowners
It’s rewilding done right: collaborative, thoughtful and rooted in public support.
LettsSafari: Supporting Nature’s Return
At LettsSafari, we’re inspired by this kind of grassroots restoration. Our own work is about making rewilding accessible, whether in parks, private land, or even gardens and balconies.
Here’s how we’re contributing to the same mission:
Nature at Your Doorstep: Our rewilding subscription brings you along for the journey - restoring wildflower meadows, hedgerows, wetlands and woodlands that support birds like the stork.
Citizen Science in Action: We help everyday people become nature champions - tracking wildlife, planting for pollinators and learning how to restore biodiversity right where they live.
Inspiring the Next Generation: Through stories like this one, we show that rewilding isn’t just for remote landscapes - it’s for cities, suburbs, and streets, too.
Rewilding the City
Bringing back white storks is about more than restoring a bird, it’s about restoring imagination. What if our cities weren’t just grey zones of concrete and traffic, but living ecosystems teeming with life? What if rewilding was part of everyday life - from the rooftops to the rivers?
That’s the world we believe in at LettsSafari. And that’s the kind of future we’re building. One sapling, one pond, one stork at a time.