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There are plenty of animals you want to try to avoid encountering if you find yourself roaming Australia. Wombats are pretty low on the list of the ones you need to worry about, but an American influencer managed to spark a firestorm due to a video where she was filmed temporarily separating a joey from its mother.
Kangaroos and koala bears are the marsupials most people associate with Australia, but you also can’t overlook the wombats that are probably best known for being the only species on the planet that produces poop in the shape of a cube.
Scientists believe there are at least 60,000 wombats roaming the only country on the planet where they can be found; the bulk of them reside in eastern Australia, but there’s also a sizeable population on the island of Tasmania.
Wombats are one of the many species covered by the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that went into effect in 1999 to dissuade people from engaging in behaviors with the potential to harm Australia’s flora and fauna—and one influencer has been accused of violating it due to a video that recently went viral.
According to News.com.au, Sam Jones (also known as Samantha Strable), an influencer from Wyoming who’s racked up over 92,000 followers on Instagram, has managed to attract the ire of plenty of Australians after she was filmed picking up a baby wombat near the side of the road before running back to a car as the animal’s mother angrily pursued her.
Jones—who positions herself as a “Wildlife Biologist & Environmental Scientist”—initially posted the video onto the Instagram account that is now private while bragging about the exploit and insisting “the baby and mum were safely united” in a caption accompanying the clip she eventually deleted due to the backlash she received for the stunt.
The outlet spoke to a veterinarian employed by WIRES, Australia’s biggest wildlife rescue organization, who told them Jones likely violated the aforementioned protection act by absconding with the wombat they estimated was around eight months old while adding its behavior suggested it was not as harmless as she asserted, saying :
“When she’s running, it’s not supported underneath, and wombats are incredibly solid, especially in their back end, so there’s every chance she could have fractured the upper humerus, or the top of the arms, or caused damage to the shoulders.
You can see the joey swinging, but it’s also hissing and crying out, which is a sign of extreme distress.”
It’s unclear if Jones is still in Australia, although she could theoretically be fined up to $235,600 and possibly face prison time if authorities decided to pursue criminal action.