The foals, he told STV News, were more than livestock: part of his agritourism business and family pets, named by his four-year-old daughter. Every few years, some high-minded committee of zoological fantasists decides that Britain cannot truly be itself until we’ve re-imported something with fangs. But a 20-year study by researchers at Colorado State University has shown the picture is far more complex. For rewilders, the countryside can never be accepted as it is: a lived-in, worked-in, deeply historical landscape. Rewilding is the countryside’s answer to cosplay: a fantasy for metropolitan pilgrims who want the Chilterns to look like Yellowstone.