County Hall leaders have defended their efforts to get a million new trees planted in Norfolk - despite scrapping their target to hit that milestone by 2025.
County councillors agreed on Wednesday to ditch their pledge to get a million trees planted by the end of next year.
Only about half that number have been planted since 2019 and the Conservative-controlled council conceded it would not achieve the one million total as intended.
Conservative councillors and County Hall officers faced questions about why the target had not been hit at a meeting of the council's infrastructure and development committee, where the policy was changed.
Liberal Democrat councillor Rob Colwell said: "It was a flagship policy - a million trees. I just really want understand about this failure and why. What do you put it down to?"
James Bensly, the council's cabinet member for environment and waste, said hitting the 2025 target had become "unachievable" for a number of reasons.
He said "challenges", such as planning rules, restraints on land, a lack of resources, delays and communication issues had contributed to the slower-than-hoped for progress.
Mr Bensly said the council still intended to plant a million trees, but over a longer period, with an ambition to plant 150,000 a year.
He said he anticipated 600,000 trees would have been planted by next spring since the initiative was launched.
Steve Miller, the council's director of culture and heritage, said he believed the one million target could have been hit, had the Covid pandemic not happened, which he said meant two planting seasons were lost.
Independent councillor Jim Moriarty asked how many of the trees which were planted had survived.
Charlotte Watts, project manager, said more than 200,000 trees had been planted over the past two seasons.
She acknowledged it was difficult to monitor their health, but that the council was working with Defra and the Tree Council to do so.
She said she hoped to bring some "good" figures to a future committee meeting.
She added: "Rest assured, we are doing everything we can to ensure they are surviving".
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