Defra hedgerow targets wrong and 'actually due to typo'

At the end of January, campaigners were delighted when environment secretary Thérèse Coffey revealed the government’s Environmental Improvement Plan set out to achieve the aim by 2037, rising to 45,000 a year by 2050.

Unlike many of the other pledges, this significantly outstripped recommendations by the Climate Change Committee (CCC) and other experts.

READ MORE: The key forestry points from England's environment improvement plan

However, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) has admitted that this was in fact a typo, the Guardian is reporting, and the targets are for 30,000 miles altogether by 2037, and 45,000 altogether by 2050. This is significantly less than the first draft of the plan promised and about half of what the CCC recommends, which is 40 per cent more hedgerows by 2050.

The Liberal Democrat environment spokesperson, Tim Farron, told the paper: “Defra should invest in a proof reader. Their accidental target was significantly better than the revised one.

“Once again, the government has failed to create a meaningful plan to recover our natural environment. Their targets lack ambition and without the proper systems in place are likely to be missed entirely.”

Expanding hedgerows has been seen as a relatively easy win for tackling the climate and biodiversity crisis, as they quite easily fit into the farmed environment while having many benefits for carbon storage and wildlife.

Thérèse Coffey (Image: House of Commons)

Half of England’s hedgerows are estimated to have been ripped up since the second world war for farming purposes, and campaigners have been asking for them to be put back into the landscape.

A Defra spokesperson admitted the error and said: “Hedgerows are important ecological building blocks across our landscapes. Our new farming schemes will continue to invest in incentives for maintenance and planting of hedgerows across the country."