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Protected areas are important for preventing biodiversity declines, yet indicators of species' trends in protected areas rarely include threatened species. We use data from the first national Threatened Species Index developed in Australia to report on trends for threatened and near‐threatened birds inside and outside terrestrial and marine protected areas. We adopted the Living Planet Index to calculate trends for 39 bird taxa at 16,742 monitoring sites (11,539 inside and 5,203 outside PAs) between 1985 and 2016. At a continental scale, the overall decline in the national index was smaller inside protected areas (66% decrease in average population abundance) than outside (77%), although after 2000 declines were greater within (36%) versus outside (26%) protected areas. Five out of seven jurisdictions showed similar switching in patterns over time. Protected areas initially had a greater net positive effect on trends of more imperiled birds than less imperiled birds, but between 2000 and 2016 declines of the most imperiled birds were greater inside protected areas than outside. Our analyses suggest that the effectiveness of Australia's protected area network at improving trends in threatened species has weakened, and support the hypothesis that trends for terrestrial birds outside PAs might be improving due to increased conservation efforts on private land. Although this study represents the most comprehensive collation of threatened species population time series and trends ever for Australia, the number of monitoring sites inside PAs was double that outside PAs, even though on average, more than 70% of threatened bird distributions occur outside PAs, with important gaps in monitoring across space, time and taxa that need to be filled to fully understand the effectiveness of public and private conservation actions at a national level. The results underline the importance of active management plus monitoring to track and report on long‐term trends across species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monitoring of threatened species is a critical part of conserving biodiversity. It is needed to understand population trajectories, threatening processes, and the type and effectiveness of management responses needed to ensure persistence and recovery. Characteristics of some plant species (e.g. immobility) should render them amenable to monitoring, whereas other characteristics (e.g. ephemeral life histories) will make plant monitoring challenging. We evaluated monitoring adequacy and extent for a large sample (839 taxa) of Australia's threatened plants (1336 taxa) and compared this assessment with a similar evaluation for threatened vertebrates. We found 37.2% of threatened plants are monitored, half the rate found for vertebrates. For monitored plants, monitoring quality as assessed using a set of nine criteria was generally low, similar to results for vertebrates. Plants with more imperilled conservation status were more likely to be monitored and tended to have higher quality monitoring. Plants with recovery plans were more likely to be monitored than those without. The likelihood a species was monitored decreased the longer a taxon had been listed under threatened species legislation. Monitoring longevity was poor but inclusion of demographic data and linkages to management were better than for vertebrates. Our assessment highlighted a lack of collated monitoring data for plants, and we recognise there are exemplary programs for threatened plants that can guide improvements in monitoring for other species. Plants are overwhelmingly represented in threatened species lists worldwide and a determined focus to improve the extent and quality of plant monitoring should underpin biodiversity conservation targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]