Species groups including birds, plants and butterflies are relatively easy to sample and should be included in indicators or indices for farmland structure parameters, but it may be questioned how indicators based on these species groups track structural changes in the landscape. Effects of decreasing area with suitable habitat may be tracked easily as species disappear and population levels decrease, but because of highly varying dispersal rates, the actual recovery of biodiversity following e.g. a re-establishment of suitable habitat positive structural changes may not be tracked as straightforward and may show significant delay. Dispersal in a fragmented landscape may hold a significant degree of inertia that effectively postpone the recovery of a habitat-specific biodiversity at newly created or restored sites.