The recent Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) report delivered a stark warning on the health of global biodiversity – a million species at risk of extinction, with the average abundance of native species in most major land-based habitats having fallen by at least 20%. Addressing these declines requires a radical, transformative change in the design and delivery of conservation action. Current efforts to recover declining populations typically focus on identifying and reversing the environmental changes likely to have caused the declines. This approach can be highly effective in rare and restricted-range species, but population declines are increasingly affecting widespread, common species. Identifying the relevant environmental changes and targeting actions to reverse their impacts is a far more challenging task for these species. 

The long-term, supranational trend indices are often used to highlight population declines in widespread species but provide little direction to the conservation policies or actions needed to halt or reverse them. However, the underlying data used to construct these indices contain key information on spatiotemporal variation which, if appropriately exploited, can provide critical insight into the appropriate targeting of conservation actions. Using long-term citizen science data for wild birds across Europe I explore the extent of spatial and temporal variation in population trends and demographic rates to suggest a framework for better targeting of conservation actions to help reverse species declines.