Agricultural grasslands include some of the most biodiverse habitats in the world, but also some of the most species-poor and inhospitable environments to non-farmland species. In attempts to make grassland-based agricultural production more sustainable, one must ensure that the biodiversity of grasslands and the multiple ecosystem services supported by above- and below-ground biodiversity are maintained or reinstated. In their global review, Zhao (2023) identifed biodiversity conservation and restoration as among the emerging research challenges in the domain of sustainable grassland management, with a steadily growing curve of scientifc contributions. In many parts of the world, natural grasslands are the ecosystems most extensively transformed by human activities, mostly for food and biofuel production (Carbutt, Henwood and Gilfedder, 2017 for temperate grassland biomes). Grasslands are also among ecosystems that are projected to undergo the largest biodiversity losses in the future due to their sensitivity to the main drivers of biodiversity erosion, notably land use changes (Sala et al., 2000). Apart from the biodiversity occurring within the grasslands themselves, it is also important to consider that grasslandbased production directly or indirectly affects a large fraction of the biodiversity in other habitats than grasslands. Such biodiversity includes, e.g. forests and wetlands that are converted into agricultural grasslands and aquatic species affected by pollutants of agricultural origin. In most instances, the expansion of agricultural land, including grassland, into the native natural ecosystems has impoverished if not annihilated their native biodiversity (Newbold et al., 2016; Ramankutty et al., 2018). The increasing human population and dietary shifts towards animal-sources foods accompanied by the rapid globalisation of modern food production systems also mean that indirect impacts on biodiversity extend far beyond the boundaries of countries and continents, via for instance the widespread and increasing reliance on mineral fertilisers and feed, and massive production of feed, i.e. agricultural processes that increase greenhouse gas emissions.