She has since apologised
An American influencer who sparked outrage after filming herself taking a baby wombat away from its mother has claimed she was just trying to get it off the road after she received death threats.
Sam Jones who shares hunting and outdoor content with her 95,000 followers on Instagram had been threatened with deportation after the incident.
She filmed the incident which shows her laughing as she runs over to a car with the baby wombat in her hands while its mother chased after them.
“I caught a baby wombat!” Jones says in the now-deleted video, as the baby hissed and wriggled in distress. She eventually put the baby down on the roadside near its mother.
Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese called the clip an outrage as he challenged her to ‘take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there’.
Jones, from Montana, shared a statement with followers in which she sought to defend her actions, saying she was ‘extremely concerned’ to see the wombats ‘on a road, not moving’.
She said: “As wombats are so often hit on Australian roads, I stopped to ensure they got off the road safely and didn’t get hit.”
She added that the joey did not move or run off when she approached them, so she picked it up because she feared it may be sick or injured.
“I ran, not to rip the joey away from its mother, but from fear she might attack me. That snap judgement I made in these moments was never from a place of harm or stealing a joey.”
She claimed she was sorry for the ‘distress caused’ and said she’d learned her lesson.
In a separate post she hit back at critics saying: “Over holding a wombat, thousands threatened my life. Let me be clear; these same people ought to understand the reality of Australia today.”
However, 40,000 people signed an online petition calling for her deportation which led home affairs minister Tony Burke to say he was reviewing whether her visa could be revoked.
It is understood she left the country of her own accord.
