The Little Bustard has undergone a steep reduction of its Western Palaearctic range over the last century. In the west of France, breeding populations declined by 96% from 1978 to 2008 in cultivated areas where grasslands have been converted into intensively managed annual crops. Little Bustard abundance and nest productivity have been monitored since 1995 in a 450-km 2 site in western France. We assessed the proximate causes of the decline of Little Bustards in French farming landscapes and quantified the effectiveness of conservation measures that aimed to reverse the decline. The decline of Little Bustard, from about 65 males in 1995 to just six males in 2003, could be related to a near absence of recruitment over this period. Since 2004, the establishment of more than 1300 ha of specifically targeted agri-environment schemes (AES) in the study site has led to a sharp increase in female productivity, mainly associated with nesting in AES fields. By imposing constraints on mowing dates, AES have prevented nest destruction and female mortality during mowing and, by increasing plant species diversity, provided chicks with a higher abundance of grasshoppers. This has contributed to reversing the trend, and increasing the population to around 30 males in 2009. Conservation strategies involving specifically targeted AES based on the identification of limiting factors can help to reverse the decline of threatened species.

The Golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) is among the most widespread of the birds of prey, covering basically the whole Palaearctic from Europe and North Africa through Asia and Japan, to the North American continent. Only few studies have addressed the species’ genetic structure and the consequences of its demographic history so far, and none of them has covered larger areas of the distribution range. Our present study aims at closing this gap. Based on 283 samples (mostly feathers collected in the field or from museum collections) across the species’ distribution, but with a focus on Europe, we uncover the phylogeography of the Golden eagle. Results imply a phylogeographic split between mainly Northern Europe, Continental Asia, Japan and North America on the one hand and Central–Southern Europe on the other. The observed pattern is likely to be caused by the Last Ice Age, when the population survived in two reproductively isolated glacial refugia. Repopulation of Northern Europe occurred from a presumed Asian refugium, whereas the Alpine range was probably repopulated from a refugium in the Mediterranean region. In Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and Alpine region we find a co‐occurrence of both lineages that heavily influences the local genetic diversity. This pattern is unlike that in most other large raptors in which usually a western and an eastern Eurasian lineage have been recovered.