According to the Instituto Mexicano de Transporte (Mexican Institute of Transportation), in Mexico more than 30,000 animals have been ran over in the last 5 years.

The main problem is the lack of signage on secondary routes. 90% of them have no traffic signals at all, transforming many Mexican roads into a deadly trap for wildlife and drivers.

Waze is the most used app by drivers in Mexico. Taking advantage of the fact that the platform can be edited by users, we asked several wazers for a very simple action: change the names of the most dangerous routes to real statistics of collisions with animals.

Thus, what used to be “Cerro Street” became “Caution, 83 Black Bears Were Struck Here in Last Month Street.” Or instead of hearing from Waze “…in 100 meters head northeast on: Camino Real Road “, drivers heard “…in 100 meters head northeast on: Attention, 5 Mammals Are Hit Here Every Day Road”.

It was a disruptive and innovative action that had never been done before in a trending app like Waze.

Naturalia, the largest foundation for the care of wildlife in Mexico, wanted to use statistics to create warning signs and shed light on the size of the problem, raising awareness of how crucial signaling really is.

Mexicans know nothing about the huge amount of animals that are ran over in our roads.

Therefore, our first goal was to collect real data about the issue and transform it into an information weapon.

With a small hacking action on Waze, we made noise.

It wasn't just about how many people listened to the data in the edited version of Waze, but also, about how many people heard of the problem through the media. Especially the government.

On March 12, the roads of Mexico woke up with a different name for a good cause.

We created virtual road signs in Waze to raise awareness regarding the most dangerous roads in the country for wildlife, displaying warning signs on thousands of places that had never had them.

The following day, our action spread through the drivers and, as a consequence, through the media.

A few days later, while everybody was talking about it, Waze blocked our usernames as a company due to the intervention; and the streets, got back their original names. However, the stats had already reached their destination. Our mission was accomplished.

With a small and creative action, we reinvented protest.

Creating virtual road signs in Waze, we inspired activists to demand for real road signs all along the country.

After our guerrilla action, more than 50 animal organizations joined Naturalia in order to fight the problem and push the government to take action.

Signage has been put up in many of these roads. And human and animal lives have been saved.

With Wildlife Waze, we changed names for numbers and accidents for lives.