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The US influencer who sparked a backlash after posting a now-deleted video of her briefly taking a joey from its mother has apologised, but says outrage over the incident is hypocritical.
Hunting influencer Sam Jones, who was revealed on Friday to , said she was trying to ensure the safety of the joey which she said “did not move or run off” when she approached it.
“I was concerned it may have been sick or injured, and made a snap judgement to pick up the joey and see if this was the case,” Jones wrote in a post on social media.
“I ran, not to rip the joey away from its mother, but from fear she might attack me. The snap judgement I made in these moments was never from a place of harm or stealing a joey”.
Jones said she had reflected on the situation and realised it was not the right approach, adding that she had learned from it, was “truly sorry for the distress I have caused”, and insisting it was “not staged, nor was it done for entertainment”.
In what she said was the only public statement she had made about the incident, Jones said she had received thousands of death threats, and asked whether: “Am I a villain?”
“The Australian government allows and permits the slaughter of wombats,” she said. “Thousands each year are shot, poisoner to suffer, and trapped legally”.
Many native animal species are protected by state laws which can vary by jurisdiction. Landowners must obtain a permit to kill a wombat, but these are typically only issued once non-lethal management options have been explored.
These laws aren’t without criticism. Animal advocacy group Humane World for Animals wrote in a 2024 article that 1,222,507 native Australian animals had been killed in 2023 under licences which it said were relatively easy to obtain.
Jones also criticised the killing of kangaroos, brumbies, deer, and pigs.
Laws on the killing of these animals can also vary by jurisdiction and in some cases a permit is required.
Non-governmental organisation the Invasive Species Council says wild pigs have become a “major agricultural and environmental problems”, that feral horses — often referred to as brumbies — put “threatened species at risk”, and that feral deer “are probably Australia’s worst emerging pest problem”.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, who on Wednesday said to determine whether immigration laws had been breached, said “there’s never been a better day to be a wombat” after it emerged that she had left the country.
And, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had labelled the incident an “outrage” and suggested she try “take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there”.
Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell also criticised Jones, but also took aim at the issuing of licenses to kill native animals.
“I urge our leaders to recognise the hypocrisy in their own words before attacking the actions of one individual. This incident should be about addressing the ideas at play, not focusing purely on personal attacks against her actions,” she wrote in an opinion piece for The Guardian.
“We should not have to endure lectures from our leaders on how to respect wildlife when their own policies continue to exploit and harm these animals with such obvious disregard.”
