Together with the Ornithological Society of Romania, Enel created The Nest Address, a geolocation app that people can use to send GPS coordinates of any stork nest they see. It is the first mobile crowd-sourced initiative to keep storks safe. Anyone with a smartphone can now send nest locations, that will even receive physical addresses.

The Nest Address is an easy-to-use geolocation tool. When seeing a stork nest, people take a picture of it using the app. The photo is automatically embedded with the precise GPS coordinates and sent to Enel. Users can choose to add further data: number of birds, nest condition etc. The locations are received by Enel headquarters, that sends teams to check and secure nests.

The app also provides valuable information for The Ornithological Society of Romania, to help their conservation efforts.

Download the app on Google Play & App Store as “Uite Barza!” (Romanian name).

Enel and the Ornithological Society of Romania launched the app in a press event, inviting journalists and influencers.

We also convinced local authorities to give out real-life addresses to stork nests in their area. As the story broke, national news outlets reported on the initiative.

People started downloading the app on Google Play and App Store (Romanian name: Uite barza!) and new nest locations started coming in every day, during the first season of the campaign (spring-summer of 2017).

Enel crews secured the hazardous nests, keeping the storks safe from electrocution.

This was just the first flight of the campaign. The app will stay on in the future as a long-term solution for Enel, helping protect storks for seasons to come.

The campaign was a success for Enel and the Ornithological Society of Romania. More than 2.800 nests were identified, amounting to over 8.200 storks. This means that 80% of the estimated stork population of Romania (10.000 birds) was located - data from the Ornithological Society of Romania.

We found that 54% of the nests put the storks in danger of electrocution because of power lines. Based on locations sent by app users, 93% of all nests were secured by Enel crews with special non-conductive frames, that keep the storks safe.

The results are even more valuable as storks rarely change their nests, returning every year to the same location. This way, conservation experts can now monitor stork population on the long run, as every year new data will be provided by app users.

With smartphone penetration in Romania growing by 400% between 2012-2016, we realized that the best instrument to locate nests is already in everyone’s pocket: the smartphone. We created an app so anyone could take part in our effort by tagging any nest they see.

The Ornithological Society of Romania was involved in designing the app. The data collected also helped their conservation efforts.

We targeted smartphone users through a mobile advertising campaign. The initiative reached an even greater audience, once local authorities got involved. Mayors granted official addresses to stork nests, and the initiative quickly made prime-time news.

The second largest bird migration route in the world passes over Romania, where over ten thousand storks return home each spring. But, because they build their nests on top of powerlines, thousands of storks die of electrocution. With the continent’s biodiversity already in decline, this little-known issue is more serious than ever.

Enel, the number one energy company in Romania, wanted to protect the storks nesting on their powerlines. But, with an energy grid consisting of 90.000 km of cable and a quarter of a million utility poles, the challenge was locating all the nests scattered around the country, so Enel crews could secure them against electrocution.

The energy company wanted a cost-effective solution for locating stork nests. Also, while it needed to generate results quickly, it also had to work on the long term, for future migration seasons and covering an ever expanding and evolving energy distribution grid.