Sam Jones, an American influencer who briefly snatched a baby wombat from its distressed mother and uploaded the footage to social media has left Australia.
Australia’s Home Affairs minister Tony Burke had earlier said his department was reviewing if it could revoke Ms Jones’ visa, but the BBC understands that she left the country of her own accord.
“There has never been a better time to be a baby wombat,” Burke said in a short statement on Friday celebrating Jones’ departure.
Anger erupted across Australia after Jones posted a video of her taking a baby wombat from the side of a road while laughing and running away from the distraught mother wombat.
The video also shows the baby wombat hissing in distress before Jones then returns it to the bush.
Jones, who also goes by the name Samantha Strable, has nearly 100,000 followers and describes herself as an “outdoor enthusiast and hunter” on her Instagram profile. She has since made her account private and deleted her post.
Her video was swiftly met with widespread condemnation, with Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese calling the incident an “outrage”.
Foreign minister Penny Wong called the video “dreadful”.
On Friday, opposition leader Peter Dutton said he thought it was “a cruel act” and that he was “glad” the influencer has now left.
An online petition demanding Jones be deported from Australia garnered more than 30,000 signatures.
However, as Jones had not been charged nor been deemed a threat to the country – the government may not have had any grounds to cancel her visa.
In since-deleted comments, Ms Jones said “the baby was carefully held for one minute in total and then released back to mom”.
“They wandered back off into the bush together completely unharmed,” she wrote. “I don’t ever capture wildlife that will be harmed by my doing so.”
But wildlife experts have deemed Jones’ act a “blatant disregard” for native wildlife.
The Wombat Protection Society said it was shocked to see the “mishandling of a wombat joey in an apparent snatch for ‘social media likes'”.
“Snatching a screaming baby wombat from their mother is not just appalling, it’s very possibly illegal under state or national laws,” Suzanne Milthorpe, Head of Campaigns at World Animal Protection Australia, said in a statement online. “Wombats are not a photo prop or plaything.”
Wombats, which are native to Australia, are a legally protected species across the country. Baby wombats share a strong bond with their mothers, and any separation can be distressing and harmful, conservationists say.
By BBC News
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