Abstract Population loss in rural areas is rapidly increasing in high‐income countries, raising concerns and debate, given its socio‐economic consequences. Despite the evident environmental dimension of the phenomenon, ecological knowledge has been neglected in the analysis of actions aiming to reverse rural depopulation. Particularly, cultural landscapes reflect memories of ecological processes that have configured current patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem services. Based on ecological principles, we present a conceptual procedure to assess the behaviour of social–ecological systems subjected to depopulation, projecting their expected trajectories through time within a framework defined jointly by demographic and environmental–ecological dimensions (in our case, biodiversity, carbon storage, pollution control, water resources and soil conservation). We applied this procedure to various alternative interventions designed to confront depopulation in Spain: (1) non‐intervention, (2) maintenance of the historical landscape configuration, (3) active conservation, (4) extensive, sustainable land use and (5) intensified land use. We conclude that extensive, sustainable land use better optimizes criteria of demographic consolidation, environmental impact, resilience and implementation of actions confronting depopulation. We highlight the need to incorporate ecological knowledge into the assessment and application of actions confronting rural depopulation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.