A Texas cheerleader with a penchant for trophy hunting – and posting photos of herself posing with her conquests – has sparked a social media firestorm.
Kendall Jones, a 19-year-old student a Texas Tech University, has more than 260,000 “likes” of her professional Facebook page, but Facebook didn’t like some of what she was posting. So, the social media giant deleted photos from her page. The company said she violated its policies regarding animal images, according to Reuters.
“We remove reported content that promotes poaching of endangered species, the sale of animals for organized fight or content that includes extreme acts of animal abuse,” the company said.
One of the photos that sparked the ire of animals lovers was Jones hugging a limp, dead leopard. But other photos of the grinning, photogenic cheerleader, still remain, and of course, nothing is ever really erased from the web. Jones posted a collage a photos – including some of the controversial ones Facebook removed – that was put together by Fox & Friends News, which asked readers what they think of this big game hunter.
Jones has also been active posting to her social media accounts fighting back against critics. She argues hunting economics has actually helped save endangered species. She also invokes the spirit of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, who was both a hunter and a conservationist. She also details her upbringing in rural Texas, watching her dad hunt and quickly developing her own taste for it.
“I took my first trip to Zimbabwe in Africa with my family in 2004 (age 9) and watched my dad bring many animals home. As badly as I wanted to shoot something I was just too small to hold the guns my dad had brought,” she writes about herself on Facebook.
She describes herself on a new Twitter account as “a huntress, conservationist, and sportsman looking to host a TV show in 2015.”
Ah, a new television show. That explains so much.
Photo Kendall Jones/Facebook
