A small group of people with narrow vested interests in the horses on the plains around Garub near Aus, on the eastern edge of the southern Namib Desert, have been promoting the protection of these animals at the expense of the indigenous wildlife that the park was proclaimed to protect. This came to a head when spotted hyaenas started to prey on the horses. This interest group, through the use of social and other media, have stirred up emotions and the sentiments of well-meaning members of the public based on a misrepresentation of the significance of the horses to local and national tourism. They set up a false dichotomy – horses or hyaenas. Through this process, they have placed increasing and undue pressure on the Ministry of Environment and Tourism to take premature and inappropriate actions to protect the horses. This first took the form of diversionary feeding of the spotted hyaenas in an attempt to distract them from preying on the weakened and geographically restricted horses (the horses are confined to one water point at Garub because of their maladaptation to the hyper-arid environment). When this proved unsuccessful, an attempt was made to capture and translocate the hyaenas, and finally to kill the hyaenas. Scientists warned against all these actions. The feeding (and ironically, other horses were killed to feed the hyaenas in the hope that they would stop killing these feral horses!) resulted in more hyaenas being attracted to the area and increased hyaena breeding and recruitment. Because the feeding was done too close to the park border, it also resulted in hyaenas moving onto neighbouring farmland where they were killed. In addition, at least one farmer with a vested interest in the horses deliberately baited the hyaenas out of the park, presumably so that they could be killed on his farm. For 10 years prior to the feeding, this radio-collared group of hyaenas had not caused conflict on neighbouring farmland.