A US hunting influencer who caused outrage in Australia after grabbing a baby wombat from its mother has left the country after the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, said immigration authorities were checking if she had breached the conditions of her visa.
A government source told the Guardian that Montana-based Sam Jones left the country on Friday morning.
Burke, who is also the immigration minister, said on Thursday that he couldn’t “wait to see the back of this individual” and authorities were “working through the conditions” on Jones’s visa to determine “whether immigration law has been breached”.
That review was still ongoing when Jones made the decision herself to leave the country, the Guardian understands.
Burke said on Friday: “There has never been a better day to be a baby wombat in Australia.”
Jones had shared footage on Instagram of herself approaching and then grabbing the wombat joey as it walked with its mother at an unknown location.
She then ran with the joey towards the camera, with a seemingly distressed mother wombat following and circling in the background. The joey hissed and screeched as Jones held it up and told the camera: “I caught a baby wombat.” The joey was then released by the side of the road.
The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said Jones’s actions were “an outrage” and suggested she should try and “take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there”.
RSCPA Australia said the footage showed a “blatant disregard” for native wildlife and the distress to the joey and the mother caused by the “callous act” was clear.
The Instagram account where Jones shared the footage was set to private and a TikTok account also disappeared. The footage sparked thousands of angry comments on social media sites where the clip was widely reshared.
A new TikTok account claiming to have been created by Jones after she was previously “banned” posted two messages. The Guardian has been unable to confirm if the account was genuine.
In one message the account creator said she was “really sorry about the wombat incident” and that “it was a mistake”.
In another message, posted about midnight on Thursday, the creator of the account wrote to “fellow fans and haters” that the hate was “too much for me to handle”.
“You guys are insane,” the account said. “I get hundreds of dea** threats for picking up an animal. WT*? Imagine someone just goes up to your child and curses at them? Let’s have some respect.”
