Agri-environment

Tree guards - just looking through the small print for the EFS options for new hedges and native tree strips which we have for EFS wider. And they seem fairly officious. In the Small Woodland Grant scheme there was a clause saying protection must be proportionate to the threat posed by rabbits and hares which as we don't have any we took to mean we didn't need to stake and guard. That clause doesn't seem to exist in EFS. Any advice on whether stakes and guards are essential for native tree strips and if so do they have to be new? As we have plenty of old ones to recycle...

Hello folks, we've set this up as a place to share news and tips about the Environmental Farming Scheme, and whatever comes next (the Farming with Nature and Farming for Carbon policies).