Member states of the European Union are obliged to designate Special Protection Areas (SPAs) as part of the Natura 2000 network. These areas are designed to guarantee the preservation and restoration of bird populations. However, due to the paucity of data about rare species, it was not known how well these areas worked. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and Dachverband Deutscher Avifaunisten (DDA) developed citizen science platforms as a new data source to evaluate the effectiveness of the 742 protected areas for birds across Germany.