An urban rewilding group is seeking the public’s views on the potential return of white storks to London as part of a project to see if the birds could make a home in the capital.

White storks could once be seen flying in Britain’s skies and building their huge nests on roofs and in trees, but they disappeared centuries ago as a breeding bird as a result of hunting and habitat loss.

Citizen Zoo, an organisation that specialises in community-led urban rewilding, is conducting an appraisal on making London a “white stork-friendly city”. It will include habitat mapping, contacting boroughs across the capital to gauge their interest and surveying the public about the birds.

The White Stork Project in Sussex has sought to create new colonies of rehabilitated injured birds at Knepp and Wadhurst Park since 2016. These can act as a “magnet” for wild birds that visit from the continent, and the project’s first breeding success was in 2020.

In the four decades before the start of the project there were just 27 records of white storks across Greater London, but there were 472 sightings between 2016 and 2023, with the numbers increasing year on year, conservationists said.

Elliot Newton, a co-founder of Citizen Zoo and its director of rewilding, said: “If you look across European landscapes, this is a bird that can actually thrive in urban landscapes. What we want to see is how we can make London a more white stork-friendly environment, and embrace it for its ability to inspire people about the nature we can and should have close to where we live.”

The survey is being led by Dr Rachel White, of the University of Brighton, with two phases that mirror a national survey she conducted as part of the White Stork Project in Sussex.

The first phase has involved surveying a representative sample of 1,000 Londoners, and the second phase is asking residents and frequent visitors to give their views on white storks and their place in the capital.

The London survey will feed into Citizen Zoo’s wider assessment of the political and public enthusiasm and habitat availability for storks, and potential next steps such as creating more habitat to encourage natural colonisation or even a release similar to that in Sussex.

Citizen Zoo has previously worked with communities to bring beavers back to Ealing, reintroduce water voles in Surrey and restore wetlands in the capital.