I've seen a many miles of beautiful ancient hedgerow destroyed during various road widening schemes over the last few years - and no attempts at replanting either. Others are routinely flailed to within an inch of their sorry lives. I used to love managing old hedgerows; a real honour to get in there at dawn with a nice sharp bill-hook and work until dusk. We did one once, managed it for a few years, then the landowner decided to have it ripped out - two miles and God knows how many hundreds of years (there was a way of calculating the age of a hedge by counting the various species of flora / fauna but I think it's been (mostly) discredited now). To me it was like singing an old Traditional Song but now, after much heartbreak, I think it's fair to say the continuity's been lost - I saw some hedgerows planted a few years back but the last time I passed that way they were gone. Got so bad I abandoned life in the country for a small sea-side town where the only countryside I see is the Lake District hills many miles across Morecambe Bay (and Snowdonia to the south on a clear day!) and inland to the landscapes of Beacon Fell where we've now stopped going because of the hedgerows are now routinely decorated with little black bags of poo by all these nature-loving dog walkers.   

I guess it comes to something when the countryside looks better from an aeroplane. The British countryside is well fucked.