19-year-old Texas Tech cheerleader Kendall Jones, an avid big game hunter, is at the center of a Facebook controversy over her posted photos of her numerous kills.

The pictures at the heart of the controversy are a collection of shots of Jones posing next to kills such as an elephant and lion, smiling ear-to-ear.  According to Jones' Facebook page, she is hoping to star in a hunting show about her African hunts in January 2015.  While Jones maintains that her hunts are all fair chases in which the local governments have been compensated and meat from the hunts were donated to locals, others have criticized her enthusiastic boasting of her kills as cruelty to animals.  Jones also states that what she is doing is best for preserves, saying that unfortunately there's not always space for even potentially endangered species,

Controlling the male lion population is important within large fenced areas like these.

Funds from a hunt like this goes partially to the government for permits but also to the farm owner as an incentive to keep and raise lions on their property.

According to her page, the first animal Jones shot was a white rhino (which numbers around 20,000) and has stated her intention to bag the Big 5 African game animals; a lion, elephant, Cape Buffalo, leopard, and a white/black rhino.

Several petitions have sprung up recently in response to Jones' pictures, some asking Facebook to ban Jones from posting such photos, and one on attempting to ban Jones from hunting in Africa.  A Change.org petition started in South Africa states,

Kendall Jones is an American born hunter who has entered the continent and has been hunting African wildlife under the facade of conservation. She has publicly stated that she hopes to have a television hunting show and she is using endangered and helpless African animals as a stepping to further her popularity on social media platforms.

She has already received much protest, peaceful or otherwise from a wide variety of people from all over the world on her social profiles, and has, on those platforms, visibly scoffed and shaken off those protests, claiming that protesters are misinformed, or simply the "sheep" to her "lion" morals.

With enough support globally we can take a step in the right direction with regards to animal conservation, and help put an end to practices such as these, in hopes of conserving what precious little is left of our natural world.

 

How do you feel about Jones' boasting of her kills?  Is her enthusiasm and her pictures painting the wrong picture?

(Image via Facebook)
(Image via Facebook)
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(Image via Facebook)
(Image via Facebook)
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(Image via Facebook)
(Image via Facebook)
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