Attempts to mitigate the biodiversity crisis require effective indicators on the state of nature, and the Living Planet Index1 (LPI) is an important tool for policy response and for communicating the importance of biodiversity declines to the general public. We welcome the recent analysis of Leung et al.2, who identified clusters in population trends between 1970 and the present from the LPI and illustrated that previously reported vertebrate declines are sensitive to a small percentage of declining populations. We agree that the disaggregation of indices such as the LPI can provide many useful insights1, but caution against the over interpretation of stable or even increasing recent population trends as success stories, because for many vertebrate species, critical losses to populations happened before 1970 (the start date of the LPI). Shifting baselines for conservation success stories need to be confronted if we are to set biodiversity targets that meaningfully represent humans living in harmony with nature for the Post-2020 Biodiversity Framework.
