EXCLUSIVE
The American tourist who manhandled a baby wombat and enraged the world has fled Australia – as new details emerge about her chequered past.
24-year-old Samantha Strable caused outrage when she posted a video online. In the video, she is seen taking a baby wombat away from its distressed mother, laughing as she runs off with the joey in her arms. The video has since been deleted.
Government sources revealed on Friday she has departed Australia, and is now believed to be on her way back to the US.
‘There’s never been a better day to be a baby wombat in Australia,’ Immigration Minister Tony Burke told Daily Mail Australia on Friday.
Australians, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, were appalled by Samantha’s actions. The Prime Minister even suggested that she should try interacting with other Australian wildlife instead.
‘Take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there,’ Mr Albanese said on Thursday.
‘Take another animal that can actually fight back rather than stealing a baby wombat from its mother.’
Following the incident, the Australian authorities, in collaboration with wildlife service WIRES, started the process to deport Samantha. It was reported that she had violated the country’s biosecurity and animal welfare laws. However, before any action could be taken, Samantha left Australia voluntarily.
But despite being an avid wildlife hunter – who has posted multiple selfies with wild creatures she had killed – Ms Strable tried to get a job with animal rights group PETA.
They rejected her application after a background check discovered she was an ‘avid hunter and carnivore’.
A second controversial video of Ms Strable also resurfaced on Thursday, sparking further outrage.
The clip shows her handling an echidna, which appeared to be in the wild, and showing it off to her almost 100,000 followers last month.
Now her former boss in the US state of Wyoming has told Daily Mail Australia how he sacked her from his hunting tour company after just 30 days when he claimed he found out she misled him about her experience.
Bruce Lindsey, of Best of the West Outfitters, employed her in October 2021 as a ‘packer’ who helped clients on rocky mountain elk hunting trips in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
Mr Lindsey said the wombat furore surrounding his former employee ‘certainly doesn’t surprise me’.
He said he was forced to fire Ms Strable after just her first month on the job after it ‘became clear’ his fresh-faced worker wasn’t cut out for the tough job of leading a string of mules through the Yellowstone snows.
‘She just didn’t have the knowledge, didn’t have the experience, and we had to assist her greatly with her duties,’ he said, citing a catalogue of issues with her work.
She then ‘contacted the state and wrote a bunch of blogs (about the company) that caused issues’.
He added: ‘I don’t recall her being a ‘biologist’ at all.’
Despite admitting in a 2023 newspaper interview that she thought hunting was ‘pretty gross’ when she was a child, Ms Strable went on to fall in love with it.
She changed her mind after doing a hunting mentorship program when she shot a deer and then tasted some of the cooked tenderloin from her kill.
Raised in Great Falls, Montana, Ms Strable was born into a Christian family with four siblings, all of them home-schooled but high achievers.
Samantha’s younger sister, Kimberly, stepped away from California Intercontinental University with a doctorate in Business Administration at just 17 years old.
‘We Strables are high performers by nature,’ Samantha’s mother Adria Strable said at the time.
‘And Kimberly embodies that work ethic, “Whatever your hand finds to do, work at it with all your might as working for the Lord.”‘
By 2020 Ms Strable was basing herself in Pinedale, Wyoming, for seasonal work during the northern summers, and then flying to the southern hemisphere to hunt during the northern winters.
Her adventures included killing a wild pig with a knife in New Zealand and stalking red deer with a bow in Chile.
Two years later, Ms Strable applied for a job at the animal rights group PETA, according to the Hustead Law Firm based in Denver, Colorado.
She didn’t get the job and lodged a complaint with the Montana Human Rights Bureau alleging age discrimination.
Samantha’s younger sister, Dr Kimberly Strable, has received about $350,000 USD in settlements from 300 discrimination claims, according to US court documents.
Hustead Law Firm was retained to represent PETA, and after doing a background search on Ms Strable, discovered that she was an ‘avid hunter and carnivore, characteristics expressly prohibited by PETA’s policies’.
Her complaint to the Human Rights Bureau about the failed job application was dismissed
In the footage released on Tuesday, Ms Strable was seen running towards her car with a wombat joey swinging in her arms.
The joey’s mother was seen desperately chasing her while an Australian man laughed as he filmed the scene.
‘I caught a baby wombat,’ Ms Strable said as the joey shrieked and wiggled trying to free itself from her grasp.
She initially defended her actions, claiming she did not harm the joey and only held it for one minute.
‘For everyone that’s worried and unhappy, the baby was carefully held for ONE minute in total and then released back to mum,’ she wrote.
‘They wandered back off into the bush together completely unharmed. I didn’t think I would be able to catch it in the first place, and took an opportunity to appreciate a really incredible animal up close.
‘I don’t ever capture wildlife that will be harmed by my doing so.’
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ms Strable for comment.
