All right, folks, this episode is different than the usual.

As you can see, we are outdoors, setting out in outdoors with our friend Jack Morley.

How you doing, Jack?

I'm good, Tommy.

How are you?

Very good, very good.

So in episode 201, we spoke with Porig Fogarty about his initiative of rewild your land.

People are rewilding land.

Whoever have a land and plans to rewild.

And that wasn't planned because probably you contacted me and we were talking about doing this episode before I even contacted Porig.

It just took a while before we get together, but now we're together and you are rewilding your land.

Tell us, like, how do you think about it?

Where the idea came from, but particularly what I'm interested in is, like, do you think about this as you're rewilding or you just have different name for it?

Like, you know, you want to make a space for nature or you want to take care of biodiversity, like, how.

How you think about it?

Yeah.

It's an interesting question.

I'll touch first on how it came about.

I'll just give you a quick synopsis of my background to give a bit of context.

I am a big nature nerd, and I have been all my life.

I absolutely love nature, super passionate about it, but I never had any way in particular of working it into my life or the main dream and goal of actually making a career in nature in some shape or form.

And my career and my background is in communication, in design, in film and advertising.

And I've built and managed creative teams for businesses in a couple of countries all over the world.

I lived in Jamaica for a few years where I built kind of the equivalent of the journal, IE, over there with the team.

And so nature was always there and at the weekends and everything would be my.

It would be my hobby in some shape or form, photography, usually, and video, which is my kind of my background in general.

But when I got back, we, my wife and I, we went about trying to find somewhere to live, and we ended up finding this incredible place in Wicklow where we are sitting here now.

And then we had our first child, our only child, Sorry.

And he changed everything for me because obviously, growing up being a nature nerd, I was very aware of the plight of Irish biodiversity, but I didn't necessarily know what I could do about it.

And I think, like a lot of us are guilty of, I'd push it to the back of my mind a bit, but he absolutely brought it to the fore again, because I was worried about the future for him.

So I decided to start by seeing how, with this land that we had, how I could go about rewilding us, managing it for biodiversity.

Which brings me to your next point of that term.

I have explored this.

I went about rewilding and imagining for biodiversity, but to get a bigger reach, I decided I'd lean upon my background experience in my career to help get the word out a bit more, reach others, and hopefully inspire others to do the same, because that's where you can really have an impact.

So I started my YouTube channel and an Instagram to just document what I was doing, who I was meeting, to get my, you know, my guidance from, and try and get that, that, that word out there.

And in that journey, I realized that there is that question mark over the word rewilding.

And I know that in your episodes of Poetic Fogarty, we talked about, you know, getting caught up in what that term actually means.

So just synopsize what it means to me, because I think, like pork, I wouldn't get bogged down.

And what it like the particulars of what it can actually mean or its origins even, which are all very important and they do have their place.

But to me, I call my channel the rewild life.

So I'm fully leaning into the term rewilding.

I do kind of say, though, that I'm managing my land for biodiversity, because that is my goal is to see how much variety, diversity of life I can, I can of Irish native wildlife.

I can get back onto this, these four fields that we're in right now.

To me, it means I made a video about it.

And what I concluded is that it is essentially like a really powerful little piece of copywriting that has captured people's imaginations.

They fully understand, just by reading rewilding, what it means versus nature restoration, which is a little bit more clunky and I suppose inaccessible in a kind of scientific way.

It doesn't necessarily appeal to the masses.

It also goes really well with, you know, on the COVID of a magazine or on a poster or it's just a really strong little piece of copy.

And I think because of its ability to reach a broader audience really quickly outside of people who are already interested in nature restoration, like the scientific community, that's where its power lies, is that it?

And you can see it across the world.

Like there's a website called Google Trends where you can see, you know, what people have been searching and in what countries that term is most searched and where it's trending.

And if you put in rewilding it's a really big topic in particular in the UK and Ireland, in Portugal, in a lot of Europe, and in North America and Canada and Australia, actually, I think if I recall to a degree as well, that's really interesting.

And then you've got all these amazing organizations that are also kind of using it as their campaign slogan, like Planet Wild and Mossy Earth and stuff, to get across what they're doing in a kind of quick and efficient manner.

And obviously the likes of NEP leading the way.

I think getting bogged down in what rewilding meant when it started is actually a bit of a hindrance because it's clearly having a positive impact as a word, to get.

To get work done in restoration.

So for me it's.

That should be celebrated and it should be leaned into a lot more and relatively interchangeable with nature restoration.

That's very interesting because obviously, and you know, like, folks, this is where we.

Where we.

This is as much as we're going to talk about term rewilding, right?

Because like, this is almost cliche at this point, every episode, but we go, oh, how about rewilding?

How about.

It's toxic to some people.

There's like, you know.

So I think we just established that you're leaning forward to it because it's a marketing term, in a sense, gives you reach.

And I want to focus a little bit on the land.

And just for folks, you mentioned your YouTube channel is called rewildlife and you will find a link to the YouTube channel in the show notes.

And also there's a video called called Full Tour of this Farm.

I think that's.

That's a good video to link.

It's a good starting place.

Yeah, because.

Because then it gives you idea where we are and what.

What that land is and what Jack does.

So links as usual in a.

In the description of the show and obviously give Jack a follow.

And you have also Instagram account, right?

There's also Rew.

Yeah, same three wildlife on Instagram.

Perfect.

Listen, I want to ask you about the land itself just to establish like how.

How did you find that in where you.

When you were looking to buy a piece of land.

Obviously you have a lot of habitats here, a lot of interesting places.

Where you been looking for something like that?

Or is it just came up and it was like, oh, look at this, this is great.

Well, actually, to be honest with you, our focus was to find the right place to build a house.

So we are, I have noted, I think in one of my videos that we are building a house on the land and it's right in the middle.

It's right there, folks.

Just right there.

Yeah, it's right behind us.

We're in the middle of four fields.

So it was really the location of the house that we were looking for more than anything with some land.

We got really, really, really lucky in terms of the type of land that we got, that it has such a variety of habitats.

Like across the four fields, it slopes downwards towards a river that we're actually surrounded by here.

If you can see this bank behind us, there's a river running along that.

We're about a kilometer and a half away from the sea.

And then these lower two fields closer to the river are a lot more riparian in their kind of makeup and their soil type.

And the water table is very, very much just below us.

So they are very different to the upper two fields, which are a lot more of a dry clay and straight away they have a lot more, very different kind of species of vegetation growing there.

So down on these fields so far I've planted about 3,000 trees across the land.

I think just over 3,000 trees.

And I've planted in the normal traditional method and in the Miyawaki method as well, which I've documented on a video.

But down on these lower fields I've put more, more alder and hazel and things in.

And up in those fields there's a bit more oak, Scots pine and things like that in those fields.

So we've got that kind of diversity going on.

Also laid out about a good few hundred meters of native hedgerow.

I've done things like putting up bat boxes, which bat rehabilitation in Ireland Susan Kirwan advised me on.

And I've put up a huge amount of, you know, bird boxes and all the varieties within bird boxes, which was.

Which Niall Hatch from Birdwatch Ireland gave me guidance on.

And in those.

Those particular things, you know, that's hands on management.

So that very much is managing the land for biodiversity versus, you know, rewilding just to touch back on it for one second and put up lots of standing deadwood and microhabitat log piles and pond works.

I've started some small ponds, but because I already have quite a bit of wetland, I haven't leaned into doing the full pond that is planned in the next little while.

So ponds.

Ponds is the next big one.

Yeah.

And we'll get into the details of all the different habitats that you have.

So let's stay with the theme of a land.

What do you know about the history of the land, what it was.

So it's like two sides of two questions in one, really.

Right.

On one hand I'm interested, like, what's the story of the land?

Because obviously it wasn't farmed.

It's just.

Well, I don't know whether it's an abandoned farm or is it like X farm or was it ever farmed and from this or maybe connected to that.

Tell me about the neighbors.

Because obviously there is this thing like, oh, someone here's this, you know, guy comes from nowhere, buys the land and instead of farming and running cattle and be like with the community, now he does this rewilding.

And that's the land abandonment and all the negativity that goes into it.

Is this an element of that?

Do you have to deal with that?

Or like, how's that?

You know, so I'm just trying to paint a picture.

Yeah, what is that land?

And not geographically, but in terms of previous land use and neighbors and what the neighbors think about it and so on.

Yeah, no, again, I've got unbelievably lucky in all of those regards.

The history of the land I only know to a certain extent because I know it's been in the same family for a good 400 years.

I want to say like multiple, multiple generations, which is until we came along, which was really interesting.

And it was rented out before we came along.

So it has been farmed in the past, but not extensively because the fields are actually quite small, so they wouldn't have been able to hold a huge amount of grazing.

I know there, there were pigs here because there's an old pig barn in one of the upper fields.

And there's some evidence of that when you look back on older maps.

And there were a lot more trees here.

Again, even just going back on Google Earth in time, you can scroll back on Google Earth and timelines, which I love doing.

There was a bit more going on in terms of trees here, but when it comes to the reaction to what we're doing here, everyone is.

All our neighbors are fantastic.

I have to say we are surrounded by quite a large farm.

Not surrounded by, but on one side there is quite a large farm, but less than a kilometer away, there's actually an soc, a special area of conservation that's managed by NPWS downstream of us.

So immediately in that regard, you know, nature conservation is quite a large thing in the area.

We're also surrounded by the river, the coast, and a road on the upper side.

Now, I know roads aren't going to stop Deer.

But you will notice we're actually sitting right now in one of the areas where I've planted a lot of trees, which are all around us here.

Very young saplings are only a few months old.

And I haven't fenced, and nothing's been touched.

And that is unbelievably lucky.

It's a gamble.

I realized that it really came down.

To it's in Wicklow.

In Wicklow.

We're in Wicklow.

I haven't fenced.

That happen.

I know.

I know, right?

I'm led to believe that anything in Wicklow gets mowed down in a matter of days.

For the most part.

You'd be right.

I mean, I did take a gamble on it.

And I talked to Ashley Glover, who I know you've interviewed, I think, most recently in your most recent episode, about how I could approach fencing for deer in a more aesthetically pleasing way, but still practical way than, you know, plastic tubing and expensive fencing and stuff.

And I haven't done it yet.

I've taken a real gamble.

I planted a couple of hundred trees up in that field about two years ago, and they haven't been touched.

And I took that as green light to kind of go.

Go full tilt on it.

And I've now put in 3,000, and they haven't been touched.

And all my neighbors I've talked to have said that they haven't seen deer, apart from one random rogue one.

So there are woods.

There are kind of, you know, quilt of woods pretty close, just up that hill over there.

And.

But I think just because this is a.

We're.

We're in a bit of a pocket, and I know that deer don't like going into places where they can't see an easy route out of.

And they definitely wouldn't have an easy route out of here anywhere.

So, yeah, bit of a gamble.

I probably will look into fencing at some point, but right now, everything's going fine.

So deer.

Deer don't use deer don't use YouTube.

They don't listen to Spotify.

So, you know, I think they're not gonna, like, hear about your saplings, your tasty saplings.

I've laid out a banquet for them, and they haven't come down, but the neighbors generally have been just fantastic.

And I even have got a lot of advice and in terms of kind of the history of life here on the land, I've been asking them quite a bit about it, and they've told me that they have many times seen Kingfisher and Otter here.

I have seen traces of otter footprints and things, but kingfisher I've yet to see.

Have you put the trail cams?

I have not put trail cams up yet.

That is entirely because I can't afford to buy one right now.

So I will.

I'm dying to do it because I really want to document.

By the end of the summer, I'm planning a big YouTube video documenting all the life that has moved in.

And trail cameras need to play a big role in that because I can't sit here filming life going by all the time as much as I'd want to.

And folks, once again go and subscribe to this Rewild Life YouTube channel because you'll.

You'll hear from Jack much more over what's going on here.

What are your plans, like, going forward?

What are your plans?

And obviously, I watch the videos on your channel you were mentioning sort of like a maybe tour, farm tours or land tours, or like education and inspiration.

All right, is this something that you're just thinking somewhere in there, down the line, or is it like an integral part of what you intend to do with the land?

Well, in terms of bringing people down to the land, that is a thought I have, but I haven't kind of put a plan together for it, what my immediate plans are, because, again, doing all this work down here in isolation for my own sake is one thing, but helping to show others what I've learned is, and hopefully they can follow along is a much bigger thing for me.

So that's why I try to get an expert in on every episode who can teach me and in turn, teach the person watching what I'm doing.

And also my Instagram, my YouTube has kind of taken a back seat for the last little while simply because I've been so time consumed by other things.

But my Instagram has absolutely exploded recently, which is great.

And there I've been kind of making videos that synopsize much more condensed versions of what I've been doing and what I'm learning about Irish biodiversity on the whole.

And two of the biggest things that I've learned since I started this project is that Ireland is behind a bit in its communication of nature issues.

And I'll touch on that in a second.

But the positive, massively positive thing that I've learned, having got experts down here who have kind of invited me into things like WhatsApp groups and told me, inform me about other people doing incredible stuff around the country, is that there are a growing and huge amount of people doing things for Irish biodiversity on their own accord, all across the country.

And that's everyone from, you know, rewilders, you know, landowners, to volunteer groups, community tidy towns not for profits and charity setups and groups and businesses and organizations.

There's a huge amount of.

I would describe it as a groundswell of work going on across the country to help balance things out.

And that caught my eye more than anything when I started doing this.

So I decided I was going to make an effort to document that.

And I dubbed them Ireland's nature heroes.

And I started documenting them every week, once a week on my Instagram, where I just introduced in a one to two minute video one person or one group or organization and what they're doing and where you can find out more about them because they need to be celebrated and the awareness needs to be out there, more about them.

So that's one thing I'm doing and that hopefully will grow a bit of legs because there's, there's a lot to talk about there.

The other thing that I've learned that I want to try and help with because I'm still kind of trying to figure my place out in all this, if I have a place.

And one of the things that I kind of think that I can help with because of my background in media and advertising and stuff, is that communication of Irish biodiversity issues, where I think we are a little behind on.

It's an observation that I've had when I look at social media and even on tv.

We tend to be quite overtly traditional and stuck in an older way perhaps of approaching it.

And there is a warrant and there is a place for those kind of approaches.

And I'm not downplaying them whatsoever.

My problem with it is that we need to reach a broader audience right now.

Like, we live in a time where we don't have the luxury of time as much anymore to let nature sit back and let nature do its thing.

Hands off all the time.

We also just need to reach a broader audience outside of the people who already have an innate interest in nature restoration or in animals in general or wildlife.

And I think, and I know many of your guests have touched on this, I think Irish people have an innate interest in nature anyway.

I mean, it's the first thing that we do when the sun comes out is we flock to our beaches and woodlands and go for hikes and walks or if we're stressed.

It's the first thing that we.

We do is we, we yearn to go out for a walk, even if it's Just in a park or whatever.

So I kind of refuse to believe that, you know, the majority, at least, of Irish people don't care about nature.

I think it's more of that they don't know exactly what the situation is.

And anecdotally, I figure that's the case because when I go for walks with my friends who I know have an interest in the outdoors, and we say, let's go for a hike in the woods, and they bring me to a Sitka plantation, then, you know, and I talk to them about that and they're like, what?

Really?

Like they did.

They just.

They don't know.

And.

But they love the outdoors, so that, for me is a big fallover.

And when I look at our communication of nature, it tends to be quite clunky when it comes to social media for the most part.

But a lot of it is overly traditional in the likes of books and in documentaries that are kind of slow and beautiful landscapes and stuff.

And again, there are grounds for that.

My only flag is, is that they're only reaching people who already have an interest in the subject matter.

So you're not.

You're only going to go and buy a book about nature restoration if you have an innate interest in it already, or it's got some kind of, you know, if it had some kind of twist on it that is really exciting and encouraging, you might pick it up, but you won't even go down to that section of the.

Of the bookshop unless you have an interest in it.

So it's not reaching the people that it could do.

Same goes for documentaries, but then not all documentaries, because you look at the likes of, you know, Sean Renan's amazing bird song, and we really need to look at that and go, why did that transcend into other audiences?

And why has it got such a.

Such a huge impact and such a bigger reach?

And for me, it's because it's not only about capturing all of our native bird species in audio, it's also about Shaun.

It's a personal story and it's a story of passion.

And it's a story that's so engaging in so many ways on a personal level, it's following him on his journey rather than just following the kind of almost scientific aspect of it.

That, for me, is why hit home really well.

And there are amazing people on social media that are, Are.

Have really, really strong followings, like the likes of Sarah Kim Wathorn, for example, who is an incredible wildlife filmmaker and documents a lot of our marine mammals and marine life.

In general, around, around the country, you know, what is she doing that's so different?

That gets such good reach.

And then you look abroad and I know when you, when you, when we look at the uk, for example, this is the importance that it has, right?

Communication is super, super important because we in Ireland, we have all these wonderful charities like Birdwatch who rely upon, you know, donations to, to keep and that's what.

They're our oldest nature based charity in the country and they rely upon our, their subscriptions and their donations, which is key.

But the equivalent there in the UK has a much, much bigger base and granted they have a bigger country and population to call upon, but they have a much broader voice and the knowledge, even in the UK alone, which has relatively similar wildlife to we do, the knowledge and understanding of the general population there as to what's going on I think is much, much stronger.

And I think we need to look at that and go, why is that?

Why do people, general people know more about the plight of nature in their country versus the equivalent over here in Ireland?

And therefore why are they getting more donations and more events to spread awareness than we are?

How can we do that as well?

And I think if we don't start doing that in a much stronger way, it's going to get lost in the ether and it could skip a generation, which is really dangerous.

I agree and there's a couple of things I'd like to pick up.

First is the educational aspect of it.

And somehow I feel like word education became offensive word and used in the offensive way.

I don't know like how that, how did that happen?

But it's like, oh, go educate yourself.

Like, oh, you're telling me to educate?

Like, you know.

Yeah.

And so I like that when in one of your videos you said that you want to inspire people rather than educate, which, which I, I totally getting behind that.

Not only because of the word used, but also I totally agree with what you said.

There's a lot of people who like nature and they would be interested.

They just don't know.

They just don't know that mowing their lawns, you know, like six times in the summer is probably not a good thing.

And other things like, oh, have you paid attention to morning cars?

Right?

It's quieter and quieter year after year.

And oh, here's this rovery, you know, brambles and bracken and all this, this stuff, it's great for invertebrates and birds and maybe it's not a good idea to hack it all out and put some right.

And it is just to let people know.

And they will do.

They just genuinely don't know.

And they think like, oh, look at that, we can do like a nice flowers in there.

So that's the one thing.

Another thing that struck the chord with me is not long ago in episode probably 202, was it, I was talking with Paul Galbraith about the land access and folks, there's going to be follow up on land access, specifically in Ireland.

So subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already because that's something we're going to talk about later on.

But in his book, and his book is in the UK reality, what he says, like, we don't need more access, we need better access.

And that again talks about this engagement with the land.

And he's specifically talking about farmers and so on.

When the farmers and those like, oh, people don't know, like they, you know.

And even though his book is kind of like a dogging on the right to Rome a little bit.

But what I can say about Porrik, he's, he's quite balanced in it and he was pushing back on farmers as well.

Hey, but what do you do to get people into, you know, like, oh, people don't know, like what do you do to get that engagement?

So I totally agree with what you're saying and doing that.

A little bit of an engagement.

And that's what your YouTube channel is mainly for.

Right?

This is where you.

It totally is.

And you touched on a couple of things that I think are really important there and that is, is language.

And I'll touch on that in a second.

The type of language used in your tone of voice when you're talking about these issues, but also that the acceptance that people have of what you're saying.

So for example, I made a couple of videos on Instagram.

One was about cats and the impact that they have on birds here in Ireland.

That's a big one.

That's a big one.

A lot of people who love nature.

They love cats as well, folks, 100%.

And I really, really didn't want it to be contentious or start any kind of debate.

And amazingly it didn't.

And I think part of it came down to the way I delivered the message.

But what I took away from it more than anything was a huge amount of the comments were saying thank you so much.

I didn't realize and now I do and I'll.

And I'll make sure that my cat stays indoors for, you know, the next few weeks while the fledglings are out, which Is important the same thing when I did a video about ivy, because obviously in Ireland we have this notion that ivy chokes and kills trees, which it obviously doesn't because we'd have no trees left if it did.

And, you know, it's native.

It's part of our ecosystem.

So I said all that.

It's a climber, Not Strangler.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

It has its own root system.

It just uses trees as its climbing frame.

And it was the same thing for the most part, by a long margin.

It was people going, oh, wow, I didn't realize this.

Thanks so much.

I was about to go and cut down all my ivy.

I won't now, you know, so, like.

But it comes down to the way it's said.

So on the language point, there are.

Again, as an observation of someone with a background in communicating, I think in Ireland we have a habit of being overly scientific in jargon sometimes with our messaging and getting.

And it's really tempting.

I get it as well.

And when I started, I was doing it too.

When you get too bogged down in terminology and one thing leads to another, and you could.

You could start with one message and easily roll into a completely different message because everything is intertwined in nature.

Right.

So that's one thing that I've noticed, that we really need to literally use the word nature instead of biodiversity.

Every little bit like that makes a huge difference to capture attention quickly and hold it.

That's one thing.

The other bit in terms of language that I've noticed is that we need to be.

We need to have a lot less language that creates groups, I would say.

Yeah.

So a lot less of any us and them kind of language.

Isn't the way that they do that really bad?

Anything that kind of comes across as a.

As a lecture people immediately switch off.

And actually the only people that you will end up talking to are the people who already know this and already support what you're saying.

And you know, that is the only type of people that you will talk to.

You won't reach the people that you actually need to.

If you're being kind of in any way patronizing or negative or lecture y.

Because they.

They will just immediately switch off.

Do you think that the.

That the trick is to communicate through entertainment?

Not necessarily entertainment.

So it is definitely a big factor.

It would be in the top kind of.

If I was to say five things that you need to think of when you're creating content.

However, I think positivity is almost a bigger thing.

And it's hard to get positivity across when you're talking about an issue.

Right.

But we need it so much.

But I think that the positivity, you know, like, is this thing that when something is scarce, like, scarcity creates the demand.

And I think when you look at the news landscape and media landscape, positivity is such a scarce.

It's really scarce.

So that's something that can, you know, compel people to watch.

Like, oh, look at that.

This guy is not telling all the doom and gloom.

But then, like you said, like, how do you talk about an issue while maintaining positive message?

Right.

Just one last thing, which you may, you know, comment on my problem with a lot of media personalities and social media.

I don't want to use the word celebrities, but people out there who are well known with the voice, they're so freaking negative.

They're like no names named and no particular social media profiles mentioned.

But sometimes, you know, I follow all those organizations and whatever, and you.

And you're sitting down on Saturday morning with a cup of coffee, you opening your.

Your Twitter or whatever.

And by the way, folks don't do that.

Not in the morning.

And just like, oh, this is burning.

This is poisoned.

This is extinct.

It's like, guys, not on Saturday morning.

Like, please.

And then, like I said, you switch off.

Yeah, exactly.

But just fundamentally, like, I don't think it's really helpful to give.

Present a problem and not follow up with.

But here's what we can do in any kind of solution.

Just a relentless.

Look at this, look at this, look at this.

This is bad.

This is bad.

This is bad is not helpful.

And the only thing that it's going to do, like I keep saying, is reach people who already know that.

And that's literally doing nothing.

So, and on that, then I think for me, everything that, what I try to do and I learned from, I look at the likes of, for example, Mossy Earth and Planet Wild, who I think have a really fantastic and contemporary approach to communicating nature issues, raising money to solve those problems, which is unbelievably important.

And they use a structure of presenting the issue and going into quite a good bit of detail about it, but then presenting a solution and what they personally have done to make a difference.

And that I find super inspiring.

And that's something that I think we need a lot more of.

That's partially that kind of thing is why I started a positive story of Ireland's nature heroes.

It's just a positive thing in all the doom and gloom that needs to be Celebrated.

And people engage with it a hundred times more.

And they.

They also engage with your own enthusiasm.

If I was to give some examples, I found a common lizard not too far from here, a couple of kilometers away from here.

And when I was out filming for.

I was actually filming for a job application at the time.

And I made two videos.

One, this is going back to the scientific language thing.

One, I made a video where I took what I thought was quite good footage of the.

Of the lizard, and I set it to music and I put text on it that kind of went into the details of it being our only native Irish reptile and its reproductive cycle, which is super interesting, and the fact that it hibernates and all that.

And it had very little impact on social.

Then at the same time, on the same day, I made a video for my friends to send on WhatsApp that was way more casual, but I was visibly excited, right?

And the lizard, actually, when I was lying down on the ground taking macro shots of it, it waddled over waddles.

It crawled onto my finger, and I was like, oh, my God.

So I took a video of it on my finger.

I was like, guys, just direct to my own friends, I was like, look at this.

I've been looking for one of these for so long, and it's actually climbed onto my finger.

This is incredible.

And then flash forward a few months later.

I was away at the time, and I needed to put something out on Instagram because I been kind of sleeping on it.

And that was the only video that I had, was that one that I sent to my friends.

And I was like, oh, this is way too casual.

And it's not a.

It probably won't do very well, but the only thing I got.

So I lobbed it, uploaded it exploded.

It was shared by Laud Bible Ireland.

It was shared by Irish Daily.

And it's now at like, I don't know, 300,000 views or something like that.

And I was like, what?

But so my immediate.

So everything that I do, I try and learn from.

And the thing that I learned immediately from that was people, first of all, react to your own delivery and your own passion.

If you're enthusiastic, people engage in it straight away.

I didn't have any jargony terminology in there, but I was getting a message across, you know, that people just generally weren't aware that we have lizards in Ireland and all that sort of stuff.

So I then went about trying to replicate that.

And I did the same kind of structure of a video about scorpions.

In Ireland and our pseudo scorpions and water scorpions.

That got a similar response.

Then I did it about Ivy.

That got a similar response.

So I was straight away, I was going like, okay, this is the two things.

The big things out of this is the way I'm talking to camera and making sure that my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife is coming through.

But also this kind of like, did you know that this is a thing in Ireland and that.

That people really react to?

So.

And like, like I said, I do have one or two videos on my Instagram where I do rant a little bit in a negative way because I stumbled across a.

The remnants of about 2 acres of a barbecue, disposable barbecue, burn down in Dunes and British Bay in Wicklow here.

I couldn't not document that and have a little rant.

But there's a place for that.

And I think.

And there is a ratio and there's a ratio, right?

I think it's even more.

It's even more impactful.

If you're this like, nice, positive guy all the time and then you rant about something, then it's like, right?

While if you're like ranting all the time, it's like, oh, this guy is just always unhappy about something.

But.

But it's also just like you, you can like, if I, if I.

To go back to my cat video, I explained why it's an issue and I didn't just say cats are out.

You know, they're one of the leading causes of our demise of our birds and, and end video.

I, you know, explained why as best I could and did, you know, and if you wouldn't mind, I understand that it's really difficult, but try and keep your cats inside, particularly at this time of year.

You know, it's.

Language is so important, but everything that I'm saying here is to try and get a broader reach in terms of our audiences.

We need to reach, you know, we need to reach everyone from people who are already interested.

And that's why there's still a place for those beautiful documentaries which I love and I consume, and those amazing books which are piled high on my bedside table.

But we also need to reach, you know, teenagers and the next generation, people who are aware of or partially interested in nature, but maybe don't know the details or the extent of what's going.

On, or have a potential.

This is just a potential.

You're not going to find out if someone is interested.

If, if you not expose like, like with kids, right?

You need to expose Them to, to the whole plethora of things to figure out like what they're interested in.

And this is kind of like the same thing.

There might be like the future nature heroes.

Yes.

Right out there, but they just, right now they're dormant.

They, they don't know.

Yeah, they look at the, you know, like a Sitka spruce plantation and this is like, I don't know, not a Sitka spruce, but it's like, oh, this is like, look at this woodland forests.

It's like.

See that?

So that exact problem I tried to address again on my Instagram.

I've really, I've really leaned into my Instagram a lot recently and I made a video about a very complicated thing to talk about in an interesting way which is shifting baseline syndrome, which is a big, like I said, one of those big clunky.

I'm going to switch off because I don't know what that means term.

And I really wanted to grasp that one and get it across in a minute or so because it's so unbelievably important, especially if we're not reaching that younger audience.

And they think that a Sitka plantation, like you said, is normal or cherry, laurel and rhododendron.

Hedgerows are green, therefore they're, they're grand.

So I made this video explaining I stood in an empty field and in post production I filled it with quite crudely actually, but it worked with, with you know, native Irish trees and ponds and stuff.

And then as I talked through the generations, I removed a percentage of those until.

And then eventually I actually turned the whole place into a desert.

And this is, you know, and portrayed what the future might hold.

And then I brought it back to, you know, our grandparents generation and it really worked and people loved it and it was shared a huge amount.

So yeah, again it's kind of.

People don't like to be lectured.

Yes.

In a given out to way or in a I'm your teacher now listen up way they want to, but they do want to learn.

And I think getting it across in like you said, as positive a way as possible, entertaining in an engaging way as quickly as possible is actually unfortunately a thing now as well.

Our attention span is a lot narrower.

So we really need to, especially in the first two to three seconds, grab people like that and hold them right to the end and not just, you know, rant, deliver the bad news and keep things positive.

I need to talk with you more about the engagement and keeping people engaged in the pod.

That is what I'm trying to do.

To answer your question from quite a while back now, the next thing that I want to do is try and get a presentation together that helps organizations, individuals, even at a bigger governmental level or whatever may be charities, help them look at their work to date, at their communication and social and video and otherwise, and analyze it and see how it can be improved going forward, how they might be able to perhaps work with people who have a voice and an interest in Ireland already and already have a strong following, like the likes of James Kavanagh, who has bought a beautiful new house in a rural area and has an interest in wildlife and wanted to build a wildlife pond.

And reached out to Collie Ennis, who has his own strong social following and unbelievable knowledge and expertise around, I would call it our small creatures in Ireland, all our invertebrates and amphibians and reptiles reptile, and worked with him to build a wildlife pond and shared that.

And like, that is the kind of project that is positive, exciting and we can learn from it and, you know, more of that, those kind of things.

So, yeah, I'm trying to get all.

Everything that I've just explained to you on paper in a presentation you.

That I can show to organizations and go, let's have a look at what you've been doing so far.

How can you improve it?

Here are great things happening internationally and here are great people in Ireland who could help.

This is great.

And you're spot on.

I agree with all accounts.

I agree with all accounts, Jack.

I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about this land, your place.

You have incredibly diverse habitats here.

So I want you to, you know, go with us through the types of habitats, because you have a white wildflower meadow, then a native woodland, which is, you know, I understand this is work in progress.

Yeah.

And then you.

You have a wetlands.

Yeah.

And then you also have a river.

Yeah.

So if you can.

If you can just, you know.

Absolutely, I'd love to.

Yeah.

The habitats here and what I've been doing to help them and learn along the way, I have, first of all, in terms of woodlands, because that's what we're.

We're kind of sitting in right now, which it certainly doesn't look like yet.

I have two places where I am trying to encourage the growth of native woodland.

One is to expand on a big hedgerow I had, and the brilliant ecologist Richard Nairn came down here and we walked through the land and he helped me identify places where I could do xyz, but one of them was where I could plant trees to Create a native woodland.

And one of those was up in one of the top fields where I already have quite an established amount of mature trees.

Unfortunately most of them are ash with dieback and sycamore which isn't native but is a great, is great housing for invertebrates I would call it.

So I planted a huge amount of native trees in beside there so that essentially expanding out that hedge, row lining and trees to.

To create a small little native woodland.

And then I've done the same down here which this, like I mentioned is a bit of a wetter area.

So I've planted a lot more alder and hazel in particular because what I'd love to do is have a hazel coppice down the line.

In about eight years or so they should be ready for that.

So and, and let that then do its thing.

And for the most part I think I've got, I've got a really strong success rate to my understanding so far, which is fantastic.

I got the trees from two places.

I got them from trees on the land which are amazing organization.

And I also worked with the Hundred Million Trees project for the two Miyawaki plantations that I've done.

What's Miyawaki plantation?

Sorry.

So Miyawaki is a method of planting that was started by a Japanese.

I think he was a horticulturist in Japan.

And essentially what he observed was that when you plant a traditionally at about 2 meter spacing, it does.

It takes a long time for the woodland to establish itself.

And there is grounds for that.

Obviously not grounds for it.

I mean that's the way it naturally is and should be.

But when you look at an established woodland, it is a.

It all works together as one, as an ecosystem powerhouse.

Under the ground at every level, on top of the ground, at a fungal level, microorganism level, it's all one entity.

So what he proposed was taking every element of that entity and planting it at the same time with a higher density rate of.

I think it's.

I can't, I've forgotten now, it's about four trees per square meter or so.

So much, much denser.

And essentially what it's doing is.

I don't want to use the word competition but for all intents and purposes it sort of is to drive competition of vertical light for the trees so that they, they do grow faster.

The end result is, at least in the short term a much denser amount of growth, but they, they actually grow 10 times faster and, and therefore cut off the light down to the soil.

Earlier, which kills back the grass and begins the secondary layer much earlier.

And they also fruit earlier and they have a higher success rate in the short term.

The question mark over it, and I fully accept it, is the longevity of the Miyawaki method in terms of obviously, if you're planting trees that close together, when they get to a properly mature size, they're going to hinder each other.

They're also going to grow vertically and very thinly.

And this method, you know, planting close together has been used a lot in, you know, in construction methods perhaps.

You know, you see it in old oak forests sometimes that were originally managed for timber and in hazel copses as well.

They're planted quite close to together deliberately.

So you get a nice straight and true inverted camas tree that you can then use for fencing or construction or whatever.

So by nature you end up with quite a thin trunk.

My thing though is that because I live here, I'm going to be keeping an eye on it, manage it.

I will coppice the coppiceable ones.

I will help thin it.

I will obviously let the ones that fall over or die standing stay there because those are microhabitats too.

But also just to learn in general because it's not.

Although there are quite a lot of Miyawaki plantations in Ireland, it's certainly not common and it's very much at early days.

And if there is grounds for it to help biodiversity, then I'm happy to be a, you know, to trial it here.

There is actually a group called Reforest Nation who have planted the biggest Miyawaki woodland in Europe in Wicklow here I visited last week, I think it was, and they have, they planted 30,000 trees in a few acres.

It's really incredible how much growth has come back.

They've also been staggering it so they're not all the same age.

So that's the Miyawaki method.

I've made a video about it on my YouTube as well if you want to see more details on that.

And that's what I've been doing.

And I've also been planting the traditional method I have to say as well.

Then in terms of wetlands, like I said, I haven't quite got to my.

Before we go to the wetlands, but just a follow up question on the, on the woodland, is there a percentage of like just you leaving it to just grow and grow on its own?

Because obviously I'm sure there's the many people who are listening to that now.

It's like, oh, you shouldn't be planting, you should leave it, you know, and it's gonna grow.

So what's your, what's your take on this and how do you.

Balancing planting trees versus leaving the land and letting them grow on their own, you know, whenever they want in the species 100%.

So in terms of.

So I have a lot of trees that have self seeded and are naturally established here as well, especially willow and alder and I'm not touching those.

They are, they are there living their lives and they can do their own thing there.

I have a lot of that both down in the lower section and up on the upper section.

The difference, the difference with my land here for me in terms of, I suppose restoration is that I'm going to be living here and I actually want to as well as managing this land for biodiversity and encouraging as much life in as possible and learning from that, like I mentioned, I want to make a bit of use of that.

I want to do quite a lot of permaculture.

So I'm trying to, you know, grow native Irish foods and stuff here as well in a smaller section of the land.

But it is going to come into it.

I plant quite a lot of hazel like I mentioned because I want to crop us to create structures around the land which could be everything from arches to fencing.

Because I know and I've seen the wonderful fencing that encourages birds to nest into and stuff as well.

And I'd love to have a bit of that here.

But yeah, I completely understand and I see people's point and they're totally right.

You know, we should be letting life, you know, just stop the overgrazing and let life come back in its own way in the places where it's appropriate.

This is a little bit different for me because I live here and I want to encourage biodiversity here.

And there is also the argument, I would say that we don't have the luxury of time like we used to when it comes to restoration.

Right.

The two things that as a buzzard flying over us, the two things that rewilding in its truest sense needs is space and time.

I don't actually don't have a huge amount of space here.

I know I have five acres and I'm incredibly lucky to.

But in this, in the terms of rewilding, it's not actually a huge amount of space and we in in general do not have time anymore.

So with that said, I'm all for helping nature and planting.

The big thing when it comes to planting is the origin of the source and you know, as much as you possibly can, understanding where it comes from.

That is very much the case again for wildflowers.

And the wildflower meadow side of things has definitely been my most unexpected big learning curve where I thought that I could just not do anything and it would just thrive and, you know, just let the grass grow and it'll thrive.

And obviously the grass thrives, but the wildflowers don't.

And figuring out how I can help more wildflowers come up through has been the biggest thing that I've been trying to get on top of.

And it's the most amount of work, which really surprised me.

And that's actually the case for everybody who I know doing this kind of work.

For example, Wildacres, Brian o' Toole and Julie Taylor.

I don't know if you've spoken to them, but they're an amazing couple who are only a couple of kilometers away from me here.

And I'd say their wildflower meadow takes up most of their time, certainly at certain times of the year.

The reason for that is I have really dense amounts of Yorkshire fog here, which is a very heavy grass and it creates a very thick thatch over the soil and basically prevents wildflowers coming up through.

So I recently had Ruth Wilson from the All Ireland Pollinator Plan over to advise me and also Richard Nairn when he was here, he gave me some fantastic advice.

And those things were to sow yellow rattle, which we know is a meadow maker, which is semi parasitic to grass and at the root system basically steals energy and things from, from the grassroots itself and thins the grass allowing.

It doesn't kill the grass, but it thins the grass, allowing wildflowers to come up through.

So I managed to successfully sow them.

But when I had Ruth Wilson over more recently, she's a farmland officer for the Olarne Pollinator Plan and she advised that I actually scalp my fields, remove the grass altogether in this first year, and most importantly, gather the cutting and take it away entirely.

Because when that cutting, you know, collapses on the soil, it creates the clumps, I suppose, that our bumblebees do need to nest into.

But I'm talking about doing this in September, by the way, not in the middle of summer, obviously.

So you need to take those, the cuttings away and all those clumps and everything that's going to break down and cause a huge increase in nitrogen levels and things like that.

Take all that away and allow then a fresh batch, I would call it, of grass and the wildflowers that are in the seed bed to come up through.

So that is the big project for me now in September, trying to do that without compaction is what I'd love to do because since I got the land, tractors used to come in here quite a bit and I've tried to cut back on that because.

Or actually I've stopped it to try and avoid the soil compaction that again will impact.

Impede the seed bed.

It might be unavoidable in this first year, but I might also investigate mob grazing, which would be an approach of getting a small amount of cattle to.

That I hopefully could possibly borrow to come in and graze the grass, fertilize as well.

Because if I do get a small tractor in to cut the grass, I don't know what to do with those bales.

I have no purpose for them.

And that's actually a big issue is like, what to do with it.

So mob grazing might be a better environmental approach.

So that's another thing that I'm investigating.

Conservation grazing in general is something that really interests me, but I'd have to do quite a fair bit of fencing because of all the planting and everything that I've done.

So that's the.

So, yeah, like I said, in terms of the wildflower meadows, they've been the biggest learning curve and I haven't figured them out yet.

Then in terms of wetlands ponds, again, Rich.

When Richard Nairn was over in a field that's level with the one that we're in now, he observed that there's.

There's a bit of a slack in the middle of it and there, just in terms of the vegetation that's growing there, there are quite obvious reeds and water plants.

My, you know, I'm.

My kind of botany level is zero.

I would say I'm really learning about flowers and grass and things.

So I don't know a huge amount of the actual names of the.

Of what was growing there that Richard identified as an indicator that the soil is very wet there.

The water table probably won't be very far down.

So.

But that is where I'm going to be digging my pond and ideally not lining it, but letting it naturally fill.

And then when it comes to the river, the river is here and it's beautiful, it's wonderful.

And last year I had it tested and it was very clear there were.

I was going to ask that.

Yeah, it was quite healthy.

There's quite a lot of microorganisms, invertebrates living under the rocks, caddisfly larvae and such that were great indicators because they're really sensitive to the PH of water, they're really sensitive to pollution and any issues there and they won't appear unless the water is healthy.

And they actually, across all the species, they, they give you an indication of this, the spectrum of the health of the river, which is, is incredible.

But I recently did a course over in Clare with Fayla Moharty who runs an amazing, amazing course to understand how you can manage water on the land and identify the health of water.

When I came away from that course with Phelim, his website is wetlandsystems, ie.

I highly recommend it to anyone who manages land and wants to understand how they can slow the flow of water off their, you know, their farm or council land or parks or whatever they may have before it reaches back into main bodies of water.

It's really important.

But when I came back then and looked at my river this year, I could see straight away that I have higher levels of nitrogen and bacterial growth, which is upsetting because I have no control over it and I can't do anything about it and I don't know what I can do about it.

I know that there's the East Wicklow Rivers Trust which I could reach out to to try and understand where that might be coming from further upstream.

But I know I really want to see kingfisher and otter back here because I know they're in the area I had San Martin's is a bank bank, a huge, big, tall, like kind of 80 foot or so bank along the river on this, the other side of the land.

And last year there were San Martins nesting in it and they're not there this year.

And I don't think that's because of the river, but it could be because if they're, you know, if there are issues that are causing a reduction in invertebrate flying invertebrates like mayfly, caddisfly, then there's much less food source for the San Martins.

I have thankfully seen them nesting nearby, but not here this year.

So.

And that is also why I would never use the river.

I can't anyway because I can't legally disturb the river.

But I would never use the water from the river on my land to feed, you know, the plants certainly that I consume food from, but also to fill my pond, my wildlife ponds, because I don't know what the caliber of that water is and I won't know into the future.

It could change.

It has changed already in two years.

So that's wetlands, wildfire meadows and woodlands, native hedgerows planted a lot of native hedgerow and immediately seen life move into that to both to feed on and.

To nest on the, on that river.

Like is it flooding?

Like is there a risk of flooding?

And because you say like you, you don't want to.

And in the video that we link in the description you talk more about it, that you don't, don't want this because you don't control the quality of the water.

You don't want to get it into the pond.

And then also you don't want stuff from the pond being washed down into the river.

Yes, true, but, but then like how the river can flood.

Right, so is there a risk that it's gonna flood an area?

And, and you had a video which is showing like water going quite quiet, quite high.

Yeah, yeah.

I think in my spring preparation video, the water, I, I got footage of the water during winter after a couple of heavy rainfalls and the snow melt that we had.

It came right up to the banks of the, the fields and like normally it's a, it's a stream level.

It's probably classed as a stream.

I actually don't know the distinctions, but it was.

It generally for most of the year it's, it's quite low and it got up to.

I, you know, that's in some places it's head height.

So I want to say like five and a half, six foot.

And it's torrent when it gets like that as well.

And where I haven't seen direct flooding is in an overspill.

I have seen that the pressure on the elbows of the river where it's, it runs straight into the bank of clay.

If you go a few feet into the field from there where there's a bit of a slack, you can see that it's puddles and it's full of water.

So the, you know, the water table, like I said, is right there.

And that doesn't go away for quite a long time.

So.

But that's, but that's filtration as well.

Again, highly recommend Phelim Hearty's course over there in Clare, but I'm not concerned about flooding.

It's certainly not in the aspect of my, of my home.

No, I'm more asking about the pond than the.

Yeah, no, the pond I'm not going to put in any place where it would be impeded by flooding.

It would be far enough away from the river that they won't affect each other, which is, you know, really important.

I have also seen a huge amount of.

Like I said, I'm about A kilometer a half away from the sea here and I've seen sadly a huge amount of rubbish and debris of some pretty large scales when like not oil tanks but like Jerry can kind of things as well floating down the river at a rapid speed.

I couldn't do anything about it cuz I can't jump into a fast flowing river like that.

I do every few weeks I put waders on and I climb into the river and I, and I grab all the rubbish that's got, got caught on the banks and I clear it before it reaches out to the sea.

But last year after the two big storms that we had, a huge amount of tree debris came down the river.

Mostly look like Leyland spruce.

So you know, non native trees that obviously are evergreen and when that particular species, which we have a lot of around here, gets to a certain size it is so vulnerable to getting blown over.

Their root system is quite shallow and a huge amount of them got blown over in the area here.

I know a neighbor of mine, it missed their house by a few feet.

Yeah like a big mature 80 foot one and took a long time to clear up.

But one of them ended up on the corner of the river here and collected all the debris then that was coming down.

Now obviously trees falling into a river naturally are a good thing as a habitat for life to live in and around and under and hunt around.

And in this case what it actually did was stopped all the kind of floating amount I would say of that pollution going further down and, and slowed it going further down into the, into the sea.

So yeah, the river is something that keeps me on my toes but like I said I can't, I can't do anything about it and I, and legally like I can't go messing around with the river.

So this sounds just fantastic.

It's just such a, such a diversity of different things that you have going on.

There's a lot going on.

Yeah.

Look, before we wrap this up, I just want to ask you one more question about microhabitats.

Please lay it out to us and to our viewers and listeners.

What are microhabitats and what are you doing in that regard?

Yeah, microhabitats for me are such an easy win and they actually encourage a huge amount of life both from the invertebrates area to everything that feeds upon them and a great place for hedgehogs to live in.

But essentially what they are, are a pile of wood generally is the best way to approach it.

A pile of logs which you can assemble in a way that's aesthetically Pleasing to you.

Or you can literally just dump a big pile of logs in the middle of your garden.

Whatever works for you.

Or either way, you'll get a lot of life moving in and setting up your essentially building like a little invertebrate city.

When you do it, you know, the wood starts to soften and break down and is consumed by all sorts of invertebrates.

Woodpeckers will even come, you know, standing dead wood.

I don't know, it's behind camera here, but I just put a log standing up right there in the middle of this little plantation.

And that is simply for the likes of woodpeckers to come and explore and feed and see if there's any life living in there.

But when it comes to log piles, you get everything that lives under them in terms of our worms and everything.

You get fungal growth on top of them and mosses and lichens.

And then you get all the beetles and spiders, spiders that are hunting in there.

And then obviously our small mammals and birds that come and hunt for everything that is living in there.

They are an immediate easy win of and create what I, I always think that the biggest thing that you can do, right, is create a, A, a banquet of the bottom of the food chain stuff when it, in terms of invertebrates and, and pollen and fruit and nectar, those are the things that I really try to get as much of as possible.

And, and it can actually be really exciting exploring microhabitats that, that you set up because you find insects are the one area and invertebrates where there are so many that you don't realize that are there that you don't see all the time.

And they can be absolutely beautiful and.

Also critical there for everything else, for.

Everything else further up the food chain.

That's what's so important about it.

But it was, you know, a plank of wood lying on grass is a microhabitat.

And when I went to visit Brian Murray, who runs a place called Microwild over in West Wicklow, he's incredible.

He takes amazing photographs of, of all our species of bee and insects and everything.

And he teaches people about them and why it's important to help them.

But I went over to visit him and he lifted up this plank of wood that is part of his insect safari that he has there.

And I looked at it and I was like, that's just a plank of wood, mate.

What's that like?

And he lifted it up and it was just so much going on underneath.

And he got really excited because he was like, oh, pseudoscorpion.

I've never seen one.

I've been looking one for ages.

And I was like, what a pseudoscorpion?

And it was this tiny little.

It looked exactly like a scorpion, but like absolutely minute, minus the tail.

Right.

But it had the claws, pincers.

And it's, it's actually an arachnid.

It's not a.

A true scorpion.

And it was super cool to see, but all it was was this plank of wood, you know.

But that's what happened was like that amazing little bit of Irish life moved in there.

So, yeah, microhabitats.

I'm slowly.

I will.

I think I will continuously add more and more, probably indefinitely.

And it's the kind of thing that.

Which is so important for me is really easy and exciting for kids to explore.

And the next generation is the most important group of people that we need to reach.

And the ways to do that can be kind of difficult in Ireland because it's hard to.

Well, it can be tricky to go out and just find life and say, look at this outside of our regular garden birds.

But if you have a microhabitat of logs or whatever, it can be a lot of fun to lift them up and see how many different kinds of insects we can find or something like that, for example.

Well, you have a lot of macro habitats as well here, only microhabitats, so I'm sure you're gonna be successful.

One last question, Jack.

You mentioned in one of your videos or a few of your videos about permaculture and planning to just grow your food here for like, is this underway?

Are you waiting until you.

You guys gonna move into the house before you start that?

Because that seems to me like another journey in its own.

It is a massive journey and I have to give credit to my amazing wife.

She has such an interest in organically grown food foraging as well, which we learned a lot from my friend Sam Arnold, who's a professional forager guide down in Cork.

He used to live in Wicklow here, but he's moved to Cork and we've learned a lot from him.

But yes, we are not going to get that properly set up and going until we move in here because there's so much to learn and we want to be actively involved as much as we can.

There's.

There's permaculture and then there's synthropic agroforestry, which I, I need to learn a lot about.

But it essentially is using.

To be honest, I'm not going to try and explain it because it There's, I need to learn a lot more about it before I do, and there's so much in it.

But we have mildly started it over here where we have planned it out on paper and we have started planting these slower growing native apple trees, for example, and some of our native berries bushes and things like that.

But really, that area is a little bit more of my wife's area of expertise.

So I'm not going to step on her toes there.

I'm about the biodiversity and she's a little bit more in the, in the permaculture.

And so that's another, so that's another episode in a year or two where we've established that and I'll have a lot more to talk about.

Excellent.

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Jack, how does, how the success looks like for you?

Like, if you look, you know, five, ten years from now, what would you like this to look like?

You know, needless to say, I'd love to see that this land here has established itself really well and there's a huge amount of incredible biodiversity living here.

That would be success number one.

But the bigger success for me is that I hopefully have taught other people and inspired other people to do some of the same here in Ireland, that we're properly aware of the issues that biodiversity is facing here in Ireland at a level that is broader than it currently is, and that we are celebrating and documenting our Irish nature heroes.

But for me, it's, you know, it's a long road, but it's the only one and it's one step in front of the other.

And I just, I don't know what tomorrow will bring, but I'm just going to dive on into it as best you can to help get the voice out for our wildlife because they can't talk.

Jack, thank you so much.

Thank you, Tommy.

All the best.

Thanks, man.