"I've waited a lifetime on this," Mr Stretton said.

"We consulted with 2,000 households to say what was going on," she said."We would intend to do the same with elk, to inform residents and let them know what we are doing.

"But also helpfully get people excited and engaged."And engaging with landowners is very, very important part of any of the next steps."One of the first challenges is getting people used to the idea these animals are native to this country and they should be back here."

The average Eurasian elk - along with the American moose to which it is closely related – stands between 1.4m to 2.1m (4ft 7in and 6ft 11in) high at the shoulder and can weigh from 380kg to 700 kg (838 to 1,543 lb).Does Ms Bradley believe such animals can be brought back to the UK and allowed into the wild?

"Initially our elk and beavers would be in the same enclosure, bringing them back together in the UK for the first time in 3,000 years," she said.

"But because elk prefer to be in those big, complex wetland habitats, eventually we would be looking at elk along the Trent valley.Since then, it seems the Iranian regime has been hiring criminal organisations to carry out kidnappings and killings in an attempt to avoid linking the attacks back to the regime.

But Matt Jukes, the UK's Head of Counter Terrorism Policing, says it is relatively easy for police to infiltrate criminal groups because they are not ideologically aligned with the Iranian regime.It is what he calls a "creeping penetration" by Iran, which the police are trying to disrupt.

Searches are continuing at a number of addresses after five men were arrested on Saturday over an alleged terror plot in the UK.Home Office minister Dan Jarvis said hundreds of officers were carrying out forensic investigations and collecting evidence at different sites across the country during a Commons statement on Tuesday.