db1022.html, respectively. Yearly d 13 C values for individual stations and global annual averages are presented in tables S3 and S4.

Mountain areas often hold special species communities, and they are high on the list of conservation concern. Global warming and changes in human land use, such as grazing pressure and afforestation, have been suggested to be major threats for biodiversity in the mountain areas, affecting species abundance and causing distribution shifts towards mountaintops. Population shifts towards poles and mountaintops have been documented in several areas, indicating that climate change is one of the key drivers of species’ distribution changes. Despite the high conservation concern, relatively little is known about the population trends of species in mountain areas due to low accessibility and difficult working conditions. Thanks to the recent improvement of bird monitoring schemes around Europe, we can here report a first account of population trends of 44 bird species from four major European mountain regions: Fennoscandia, UK upland, south‐western (Iberia) and south‐central mountains (Alps), covering 12 countries. Overall, the mountain bird species declined significantly (−7%) during 2002–2014, which is similar to the declining rate in common birds in Europe during the same period. Mountain specialists showed a significant −10% decline in population numbers. The slope for mountain generalists was also negative, but not significantly so. The slopes of specialists and generalists did not differ from each other. Fennoscandian and Iberian populations were on average declining, while in United Kingdom and Alps, trends were nonsignificant. Temperature change or migratory behaviour was not significantly associated with regional population trends of species. Alpine habitats are highly vulnerable to climate change, and this is certainly one of the main drivers of mountain bird population trends. However, observed declines can also be partly linked with local land use practices. More efforts should be undertaken to identify the causes of decline and to increase conservation efforts for these populations.

Maximizing the area under biodiversity-related conservation measures is a main target of the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy to 2020. We analyzed whether agrienvironmental schemes (AES) within EU common agricultural policy, special protected areas for birds (SPAs), and Annex I designation within EU Birds Directive had an effect on bird population changes using monitoring data from 39 farmland bird species from 1981 to 2012 at EU scale. Populations of resident and short-distance migrants were larger with increasing SPAs and AES coverage, while Annex I species had higher population growth rates with increasing SPAs, indicating that SPAs may contribute to the protection of mainly target species and species spending most of their life cycle in the EU. Because farmland birds are in decline and the negative relationship of agricultural intensification with their population growth rates was evident during the implementation of AES and SPAs, EU policies seem to generally attenuate the declines of farmland bird populations, but not to reverse them.

Aim Many species are showing distribution shifts in response to environmental change. We explored (a) the effects of inter‐annual variation in winter weather conditions on non‐breeding distributional abundance of waterbirds exploiting different habitats (deep‐water, shallow water, farmland) and (b) the long‐term shift in the population centroid of these species and investigate its link to changes in weather conditions. Location Europe. Methods We fitted generalized additive mixed Models to a large‐scale, 24‐year dataset (1990–2013) describing the winter distributional abundance of 25 waterbird species. We calculated the annual and long‐term (3‐year periods) population centroid of each species and used the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index to explain the inter‐annual and long‐term shifts in their location. Results (a) Year‐to‐year southwestwards shifts in the population centroids of deep‐ and shallow‐water species were linked to negative NAO values. Shallow‐water species shifted northeastwards associated with positive NAO values and the distance shifted increased with increasing NAO. Deep‐water species shifted northeastwards up to zero NAO indices, but showed no further increase at higher NAO values. (b) Deep‐water species showed long‐term northeastwards shifts in distributional abundance throughout the 1990s and the 2000s. Shallow‐water species, on the other hand, shifted northeastwards during the 1990s and early 2000s, but southwestwards thereafter. There were no significant links between the NAO and year‐to‐year movements or long‐term shifts in farmland species’ population centroid. Main Conclusions We provide evidence for a link between both year‐to‐year and long‐term changes in waterbird winter distributional abundances at large geographical scales to short‐ and long‐term changes in winter weather conditions. We also show that species using shallow water, deep‐water and farmland habitats responded differently, especially at high NAO values. As well as important ecological implications, these findings contribute to the development of future conservation measures for these species under current and future climate change.

Declines in European bird populations are reported for decades but the direct effect of major anthropogenic pressures on such declines remains unquantified. Causal relationships between pressures and bird population responses are difficult to identify as pressures interact at different spatial scales and responses vary among species. Here, we uncover direct relationships between population time-series of 170 common bird species, monitored at more than 20,000 sites in 28 European countries, over 37 y, and four widespread anthropogenic pressures: agricultural intensification, change in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature change over the last decades. We quantify the influence of each pressure on population time-series and its importance relative to other pressures, and we identify traits of most affected species. We find that agricultural intensification, in particular pesticides and fertiliser use, is the main pressure for most bird population declines, especially for invertebrate feeders. Responses to changes in forest cover, urbanisation and temperature are more species-specific. Specifically, forest cover is associated with a positive effect and growing urbanisation with a negative effect on population dynamics, while temperature change has an effect on the dynamics of a large number of bird populations, the magnitude and direction of which depend on species' thermal preferences. Our results not only confirm the pervasive and strong effects of anthropogenic pressures on common breeding birds, but quantify the relative strength of these effects stressing the urgent need for transformative changes in the way of inhabiting the world in European countries, if bird populations shall have a chance of recovering.