Shortly after the VETPAW team arrived in Tanzania, Johnson’s gun show comments resurfaced. Someone posted the video to Reddit and it went viral. The Internet labeled her a “poacher hunter.” Tributes to Johnson began to appear online. Her supporters found pictures from her days as a “tactical model,” when she donned tight fitting combat attire and posed with massive firearms. Although the photos had no connection to VETPAW or Johnson’s work in Africa, people associated her remarks with the pictures.

News outlets began to pick up the story. Although Johnson had detractors, many people viewed her as a rogue hero, stepping in to take drastic action where others had failed. The Daily Mail ran an article typical of the coverage, headlined “Poaching the poachers! Female Army veteran leaves US to join vigilante team hunting down rare wildlife killers in Africa.” As with most of those posting about Johnson and VETPAW at the time, Tate says, no one at the Daily Mail ever contacted him or anyone else in the organization for a comment. (The Daily Mail did not respond to an inquiry about whether it contacted Tate before publication.)

Tate, meanwhile, did not plan to have anyone in his organization “kill some bad guys,” as Johnson had suggested. Even if there were no legal and ethical problems with killing poachers, doing so wouldn’t address the root of the problem. For every poacher theoretically “eliminated,” there are dozens more ready to replace him. As long as poaching remains a multibillion dollar illicit industry and poverty is pervasive in Africa, conservationists say, there will be no shortage of people willing to shoot elephants, rhinos and other African wildlife.

But Tanzanian authorities could not tolerate an apparent vigilante anti-poaching organization operating within the country’s borders. In May, Tate awoke to a 3 a.m. phone call from a friend, telling him that Lazaro Nyalandu, the minister of natural resources and tourism, had held a televised press conference that day saying he was “saddened” and “disappointed” by what the group had posted online. He announced that the government had canceled all its agreements with VETPAW and would not allow the group to operate in the country anymore.

“Nobody actually contacted me about any of this. Nobody at all,” says Tate. “It just kind of happened, which is a little weird. I get it, though, because when you have an image floating around like that it may send off a different message.”

Without much ceremony, Tate and the five other members of VETPAW left the country. Months later, Tate is still working to rebrand his organization and find a way back to Tanzania or another African nation where he can assist anti-poaching efforts.

The Internet’s response to VETPAW underscores the difficulty of trying to engage the public on an issue as complex as protecting African wildlife. Most recently, the Internet exploded after American dentist Walter Palmer killed Cecil, a beloved lion, in Zimbabwe. Palmer reportedly paid as much as $54,000 to hunt a lion and insists that the kill was conducted legally. Internet outrage over the incident led to calls for a blanket ban on trophy hunting. While controversial, the practice has proponents in the conservation sector who point to the millions of dollars trophy hunting generates to protect African wildlife. Many also argue that a ban could put animals at greater risk by removing the financial incentive that hunting fees create for locals to protect wildlife.

“We always want a simple answer. It’s either good or bad. It’s black or white. Unfortunately, the nature of the environment and the nature conservation in Africa is mixed and nuanced,” says Kathleen Garrigan, spokeswoman for the African Wildlife Foundation, or AWF. “Even if we got a handle on poaching, even if demand disappeared for ivory and rhino horn products and there was no more commercial poaching of elephants, rhinos, lions and other animals, we would still have issues mitigating conflict between wildlife and humans. We would still have the issues of trying to ensure that there’s enough space as Africa rapidly modernizes and human communities expand.”