Create or Restore 48,000km of Hedgerows by 2037

Commitment: Create or restore at least 48,000 kilometres of hedgerows by 2037. Environment Act 2021 statutory target.

Owner: Defra / Natural England

Target date: 2037

Metric: Kilometres of hedgerow created or restored, monitored via ELM uptake data and Countryside Survey.

Status: active

Context

Hedgerows are among England’s most biodiverse habitats — providing corridors for wildlife movement, habitat for farmland birds and pollinators, carbon storage, and flood mitigation through water interception. England lost approximately half its hedgerows between 1945 and 1985. The statutory target aims to reverse this trend at scale.

Delivery mechanisms

• SFI hedgerow management options: Payments for maintaining, restoring, and planting hedgerows
• Countryside Stewardship: Higher-tier payments for hedgerow creation and restoration
• Landscape Recovery: Landscape-scale hedgerow network restoration
• Batters Review (Farming Rural Policy 2025): Recommended improvements to hedgerow protection regulations

Connection to biodiversity targets

Hedgerow creation/restoration contributes to:

• Species abundance recovery (particularly farmland birds, invertebrates)
• defra-habitat-250kha-2030 habitat target (hedgerows as wildlife-rich habitat)
• Carbon sequestration (agroforestry element)
• Water retention and flooding mitigation

Key risk

SFI simplification (January 2026) affected some hedgerow management payment options. The revised scheme structure may reduce uptake of hedgerow-specific actions, creating delivery risk against the 2037 target.