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Hello and welcome to the Scotland Outdoors podcast I'm Mark Stephen he's you and Michael

Ruth and we're just going to look at one single issue here yeah we've covered the story of

the beaver reintroduction in Scotland. Now this is the first ever successful

introduction of a mammal in Britain ever and it's up and running and it's really really

successful. A lot of controversy. Well there's a lot of controversy because there was a

trial area down in Argyle. Everybody kind of signed off on it down there and the

beavers were introduced and actually the terrain of it down there and the beavers were introduced

and actually the terrain down there is absolutely perfect for beavers. But simultaneously almost,

beavers were reintroduced illegally by somebody, nobody knows who, into the Teaside area

and they are loving it there but the farmers aren't.

Yeah, it's causing major problems of flooding,

but it's a topic we've discussed many times,

so we're going to have to look at the history of the reintroduction of the beaver.

It took three decades,

and we've actually been doing this job long enough to have covered it every step of the way.

But this week they were given official legal protection.

There was a big celebration event down in Edinburgh and I was there as well.

I'm delighted to be able to introduce the Cabinet Secretary for Environment,

...