When you think of London ’s birdlife, pigeons, ducks, seagulls and parakeets are probably the first feathered friends that spring to mind. But if an ambitious new rewilding initiative goes to plan, you might also soon be spotting stunning white storks around the capital. White storks’ were reintroduced to southern England in 2016 after a whopping 600-year absence, and now urban rewilding group Citizen Zoo has developed an initiative dedicated to exploring how to bring the beautiful bird back to the capital.
As part of the project, the group will be scouting out potential habitats for the storks, which prefer wetlands and farmland, and gathering support from London boroughs and locals. Citizen Zoo is likely best known for its involvement in a previous rewilding initiative which successfully brought back beavers to west London for the first time in 400 years. Elliot Newton, the group’s co-founder, told the Guardian : ‘We know we have habitat here, and there’s a lot of wetland restoration occurring across Greater London as well so hopefully the habitat opportunities are increasing over time.
’ He added: ‘We don’t know if it’s possible yet but how amazing would it be if white storks nested in St James’s Park, beside Buckingham Palace, as a symbol of ecological recovery in the capital?’ The initiative comes after a historic milestone was reached in 2020, when a pair of white storks bred in the wild in the UK at the Knepp Estate in West Sussex thanks to the pio.