England’s hedgerows would stretch almost ten times around the Earth if lined up end to end.
That’s according to a new map - the most comprehensive to date - of these historic features of the landscape.
Ecologists hope the data will lead to better protections for the much-loved lines of trees and shrubs that provide food and shelter for wildlife, and store large amounts of carbon.
Laser scanning from the air reveals a total of 390,000 km of hedges.
They’ve made the data available here: https://catalogue.ceh.ac.uk/documents/d90a3733-2949-4dfa-8ac2-a88aef8699be
(It would have been nice had the news article added a link to the UK Environmental Information Data Centre, rather than hiding the originator half way down the article in plain text)