Late-season weed escapes are often ignored because they rarely cause crop yield penalty. Traditional weed management recommendations are based on the economic threshold (ET) approach, wherein management is required if the predicted current-season yield loss is greater than the cost of control interventions. While ET-based weed management can reduce current-season production costs and promote farmland biodiversity, it does not consider the long-term biological and economic consequences associated with late-season weed seed production. An important concern is that late-season weed seed production will replenish the soil seedbank, ensuring future weed problems. In the context of herbicide resistance evolution, allowing late-season weed seed production can be problematic because the probabilities of occurrence of resistant mutants rise with increases in seed production. A key component of herbicide resistance mitigation and management is preventing seed production and buildup of the soil seedbank. Late-season weed management efforts constitute additional expenses to growers, which cannot be recouped in that growing season, but any such investment must be weighed against the perceived long-term benefits. It appears that management of late-season weed escapes is valuable in a number of situations, and the degree to which management interventions should be employed can be case-specific. Adoption of economic optimum thresholds (EOTs), which can be established using bio-economic models, will be useful for making management decisions for late-season weed escapes. In systems vulnerable to herbicide resistance evolution, bio-economic resistance thresholds (BERTs) will be appropriate and bio-economic resistance models (BERMs) will be helpful for establishing such thresholds for specific production scenarios. Management considerations for late-season weed escapes are discussed, and knowledge gaps for future research are identified.

Unlike most parts of the European Union (EU), Southern Transylvania (Central Romania) is characterized by an exceptionally high level of farmland biodiversity. This results from traditional small-scale farming methods that have maintained extensive areas of high nature value farmland. Following the post-socialist transition, Southern Transylvania faces serious challenges such as under-employment and rural population decline, which put traditional farming at risk. With Romania's accession to the EU in 2007, Southern Transylvania became part of a complex multi-level governance system that in principle provides mechanisms to balance biodiversity conservation and rural development. To this end, the most important instruments are the ‘Natura 2000’ network of protected areas and EU rural development policy. Structured questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with town hall representatives from 30 villages in Southern Transylvania and local EU experts revealed that EU policies are often poorly aligned with local conditions. To date, the implementation of EU rural development policy is strongly focused on economic development, with biodiversity conservation being of little concern. Moreover, relevant EU funding opportunities are poorly communicated. Bridging organizations should be strengthened to foster the implementation of a rural development strategy that integrates local needs and biodiversity conservation.