Farmland bird populations have strongly declined across Europe over the last decades due to agriculture intensification, despite successive reforms of EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In parallel, CAP has led to a reduction of fallow land, a critical habitat for biodiversity in agroecosystems. Fallow land in Spain, a country harboring the largest European populations of many endangered farmland birds, has decreased by 1.1 million ha in 15 years. The significant positive relationship between yearly change rates of the Spanish Farmland and Cereal Bird Indices (FBI and CBI) and fallow surface change highlights the adequacy of fallow land cover as an indicator of the state of farmland bird communities at country level. Moreover, the strong and positive association between the reduction in abundance of the fallow specialist little bustard and fallow surface suggests a potential causal link between these two factors. These results highlight the need for a new CAP that guarantees the maintenance of fallow land in European agroecosystems if farmland bird populations are to be conserved.

The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has not halted farmland biodiversity loss. The CAP post‐2023 has a new ‘‘Green Architecture,’’ including the new ‘‘Eco‐scheme’’ instrument. How can this new Green Architecture help tackle the biodiversity crisis? Through 13 workshops and an online survey, over 300 experts from 23 European Member States addressed this question.From experts’ contributions, key principles for success include preserving and restoring (semi)natural elements and extensive grasslands; improving spatial planning and landscape‐scale implementation, including through collective actions; implementing result‐based approaches; and improved knowledge exchange. To maximize the effectiveness of Eco‐scheme for biodiversity, experts highlighted the need to prioritize evidence‐based actions, allocate a sufficient budget for biodiversity, and incentivize management improvements through higher payment levels. Additionally, stronger coherence is needed among CAP instruments.For effective CAP implementation, the European Commission and the Member States should expand investments in biodiversity monitoring, knowledge transfer, and capacity‐building within relevant institutions. The remaining risks in the CAP's ability to reverse the loss of farmland biodiversity still require better design, closer monitoring, greater transparency, and better engagement with farmers. Additionally, greater involvement of scientists is needed to guide the CAP toward restoring farmland biodiversity while accounting for synergies and trade‐offs with other objectives.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) has become the second renewable energy source, giving rise to potential conflicts with biodiversity conservation. However, the information available about the impacts and mitigation measures of solar PV energy is scarce and scattered, and a rigorous and comprehensive review on the topic is lacking. Here, we review the state of knowledge on its impacts and mitigation measures and identify main knowledge gaps. For that, we reviewed more than 2000 articles, out of which only 180 assessed the impacts of solar PV ( N = 138) and/or propose mitigation measures (65). Even though Asia and Europe head the list of regions with the highest PV installed capacity (59% and 22%, respectively), a large portion of the existing knowledge is drawn from North American environmental contexts (48% of the studies), specifically from deserts (41%). Impacts were addressed on plants (26%), arthropods (14%), birds (10%), microorganisms (10%), reptiles (7%), mammals (4%), and bats (1%), but also on abiotic factors (e.g., humidity and temperature; 20%) and ecosystem services (3%). Most studies addressed the impact of PV on habitat alteration at landscape (33%) and microhabitat scale (20%), and on microclimate at microhabitat scale (17%), but other topics have been scarcely addressed (e.g., impact on microclimate at landscape scale or the potential of agrivoltaic systems). Lastly, 53% of the studies employed a single PV facility, and preconstruction situations were rarely reported (8%). There is a strong environmental context bias in the current understanding of PV impacts, which might not be extrapolable to other environmental situations like farmlands, where most of the solar PV capacity is being installed. Moreover, standardized and robust sampling designs are lacking to address cumulative, long‐term, and long‐scale impacts and produce comparable findings across contexts. Given the lack of empirical evidence and the irrepressible development of PV energy, it is advisable to apply an iterative monitoring and adaptive process to guarantee a safe energy transition. This review may provide useful guidance on prioritizing research efforts for a smooth shift to renewable energy.

We studied variables affecting spatial and inter-annual variations in presence/absence and abundance of little bustard (Tetrax tetrax) males in extensive cereal farmland in central Spain. Both variables were positively influenced by the percentage of arable surface and also by substrate heterogeneity. In addition, male abundance varied significantly between years and among sectors of the study area, even when taking into account variation in landscape variables. A significant interaction between year and sector showed that abundance variations did not follow a fixed pattern, meaning that interannual variation in male abundance among sectors cannot be predicted. We discuss potential alternatives to explain such variation, as well as the implications of our results for the species' population estimates, status assessment and conservation.