Concern about biodiversity loss has led to increased public investment in conservation. Whereas there is audwidespread perception that such initiatives have been unsuccessful, there are few quantitative tests of thisudperception. Here, we evaluate whether rates of biodiversity change have altered in recent decades in threeudEuropean countries (Great Britain, Netherlands and Belgium) for plants and flower visiting insects. Weudcompared four 20-year periods, comparing periods of rapid land-use intensification and natural habitat lossud(1930–1990) with a period of increased conservation investment (post-1990). We found that extensive speciesudrichness loss and biotic homogenisation occurred before 1990, whereas these negative trends becameudsubstantially less accentuated during recent decades, being partially reversed for certain taxa (e.g. bees inudGreat Britain and Netherlands). These results highlight the potential to maintain or even restore currentudspecies assemblages (which despite past extinctions are still of great conservation value), at least in regionsudwhere large-scale land-use intensification and natural habitat loss has ceased.
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