Over the past decades, advances in technology have radically changed the way environmental data collection can be performed. Web-based facilities and smartphone apps have become increasingly common, considerably widening the opportunities offered to contribute to monitoring activities. Biodiversity data gathering solutions inspired by citizen science principles have been successfully applied to several species, whose monitoring greatly benefitted from a network of potential observers. The time is ripe to widen the range of application of these potentialities to less easy-to-monitor species. The Italian Wildcat Project (www.gattoselvatico.it) is the first experience in Italy of a country-wide survey that builds upon the double remit of institutional wildlife monitoring and citizen science data collection, aiming at taking the most from the combination of both fields. A similar effort is only made possible by a network of private and public entities at the regional and national level and by the participation of passionate citizen scientists. An example to be possibly extended to other species of conservation concern.