Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is the latest to criticise a US influencer whose video of her taking a wild baby wombat away from its distressed mother has angered conservationists.
Albanese suggested that the woman, Sam Jones, tries doing so with animals that “can actually fight back”: “Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there.”
Ms Jones, who calls herself an “outdoor enthusiast and hunter”, was filmed picking up the joey by the road and running across it to a car, while its mother ran after them.
The man filming can be heard laughing: “Look at the mother, it’s chasing after her!” The video, which was filmed in Australia, has since been deleted.
Immigration officials are reviewing Ms Jones’s visa, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told the BBC, following calls for her to be deported.
An online petition supporting Ms Jones’s deportation has received 10,500 signatures so far.
“Given the level of scrutiny that will happen if she ever applies for a visa again, I’ll be surprised if she even bothers,” Burke said in a statement.
Ms Jones’s “appalling” behaviour could have caused severe harm to the wombats, conservationists say.
The Wombat Protection Society said it was shocked to see the “mishandling of a wombat joey in an apparent snatch for ‘social media likes'”.
“[She] then placed the vulnerable baby back onto a country road – potentially putting it at risk of becoming roadkill,” it noted in its statement, adding that it remains unclear if the joey reunited with its mother.
“I caught a baby wombat,” Ms Jones exclaimed in the video, while the joey could be heard hissing and struggling in her grip.
Her caption in the now-deleted post read: “My dream of holding a wombat has been realised! Baby and mom slowly waddled back off together into the bush.”
Credit: bbc.com
