What actually happens to the peat itself? Because we think obviously of the disappearance of species themselves, but there's a lot else going on, isn't there? You're

looking at peat that is bare.

It's beginning to erode.

Quite often it's cracked.

That's very vulnerable to a slide if we get some of our torrential water events in the winter.

Absolutely hemorrhaging carbon.

From a biodiversity point of view, it's extremely poor carbon.

Where does the common edge farmer fit into all of that?

Can you put that in some context? What should it be, and what does it tell us about where these hills have ended up?

Well, we've lost huge amounts of woodland nationally.

Like, we're one of the [laughs] the least wooded countries in Europe, and most of our woodland cover nationally is non-native commercial Sitka spruce plantations.

Uh, myself and Paddy Purser and BEC consultants are currently working on a plan for the national park, which is a 100-year vision for woodlands within the park, and it's looking at the condition of the existing woodlands and looking at where woodland could be restored to.

And even if we were to restore all the areas that we think woodlands should be in, it would actually be a very small percentage of the park.

It would, it would only be 6% of the national park.

Where does the commonage farmer fit into all of that?

Um, well, the SUAS CIP was, was, uh, one of the, the flagship projects that actually started looking at trees in the uplands and restoring them.

What actually happens to the peat itself? Because we think obviously of the disappearance of species themselves, but there's a lot else going on, isn't there? You're

looking at peat that is bare.

It's beginning to erode.

Quite often it's cracked.

That's very vulnerable to a slide if we get some of our torrential water events in the winter.

Absolutely hemorrhaging carbon.

From a biodiversity point of view, it's extremely poor soil.

Where does the common edge farmer fit into all of that?

But I really wanted to ask you about that.

Downstream of here, below the white bridge, the water quality has been very poor for very many years, and that's essentially due to the acid mine drainage from the, the mining in the Avoca mines.

It's also that we had essentially sewage discharging from Avoca Village and also from Arklow Town directly into the river.

So the wastewater treatment plant in Arklow is under construction at the moment, and the Avoca Wastewater Treatment Plant is also going to go i- into construction, so those two elements alone will make an enormous difference to water quality.

So the river went from being kind of polluted to moderately polluted, so the scientific term is Q2.

So it went from Q2, which was kind of fairly polluted, to Q3, which is moderately polluted.

So it's actually, the water quality in the river has improved.

What role has it had to play in this change in the river?