> Long‐term monitoring of biodiversity is necessary to identify population declines and to develop conservation management. We compared population trends for 103 bird species estimated over 28 years from a structured monitoring programme and from unstructured citizen science data to assess whether trends estimated from the two data sources were correlated.

> We caution that unstructured citizen science databases cannot replace structured monitoring data because the former are less sensitive to population changes. Thus, unstructured data may not fulfil one of the most critical functions of structured monitoring programmes, namely to act as an early warning system that detects population declines.

Kamp &al. Unstructured citizen science data fail to detect long‐term population declines of common birds in Denmark. First published: 10 July 2016

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