Ken Whelan

We may be very uncomfortable with where they're going to live.

And they may be in small numbers at first.

These things have been around for millions of years.

They're a lot cuter than we are.

Well, I'd rather take that chance than the other way around, to be quite honest, you know.

But certainly that river restoration is now really taking hold.

And the great thing is that a lot of our colleagues in the terrestrial world are now joining forces with us.

And certainly we're looking to places like the River Dee in Scotland, where they've done absolutely amazing work at restoring areas in Scotland.

And when you go to Scotland on your holidays, it's always very funny because I've worked a lot in Scotland to hear people comment

on the beautiful wild nature that they see at the top of the Dee.

And this is an area where you have kind of bare bog land, not a tree in sight, hardly a bit of vegetation in sight.

And of course, the deer have eaten this into a situation where it nearly doesn't exist.

Then you have people burning grouse moors in order to have grouse there.

But people have suddenly copped on.

that deer management is just so important to us in terms of Ireland and Scotland.

And there's a really good debate now between the aquatic biologists and the terrestrial biologists about trying to integrate these things because one is dependent on the other.

And really, some of the young people I heard speak recently at a conference in DCU, some of the young biologists, they really did my heart good.

These guys and girls are just so committed to what they're doing and they've so many wonderful tools.

It's fantastic.

It's gone out of my head.