FARMERS in England must comply with tough new standards to protect wildlife or risk losing new basic payments for looking after the land under reform of the Common Agriculture Policy.

From next July they must leave two-metre strips around hedges and ditches free from crops and chemical sprays or state inspectors will order them to pay back cash to Brussels. The move is intended to reverse years of intensive farming. Numbers of farmland birds have declined and thousands of miles of hedgerows have been lost in the past 30 years.

Conservationists hope that the new rules will help to restore numbers of yellowhammers, linnets and grey partridges and that even more elusive birds such as spotted flycatchers and bullfinches will find it more easy to breed without their habitats being threatened.

Many landowners and farmers have been fighting the two-metre strip rule for weeks because they think it unfair that the move is not being extended to Wales and Scotland. One source said: “Another objection is that this is the State imposing its will over how the farmer can use his land.”

Howevr, Margaret Beckett, the Rural Affairs Secretary, is adamant that a shake-up in the £1.7 billion annual spending on the CAP in England should force greener farming methods on farmers.

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