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Idaho Official Resigns Over 'Nauseating' Safari Photos

Blake Fischer boasted about killing family of baboons
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 16, 2018 3:18 AM CDT
Updated Oct 16, 2018 6:00 AM CDT
Idaho Official Resigns Over 'Nauseating' Safari Photos
Baboons roam the Ngorongoro Crater, west of Arusha, northern Tanzania.   (AP Photo/Mosa'ab Elshamy)

Idaho Gov. Butch Otter says he has asked for, and received, the resignation of a wildlife official who was heavily criticized for sharing graphic photos of his kills after a hunting trip in Africa. Fish and Game Commissioner Blake Fischer, who boasted about killing a family of baboons, failed to "exercise good judgment," the governor's office said in a press release. The governor's office says that out of 1,134 emails it received about Fischer, only nine were positive. In his resignation letter, Fischer admitted he had failed to "display an appropriate level of sportsmanship and respect" for the animals he "harvested" during the trip to Namibia, the Idaho Statesman reports.

Fischer sent the graphic photos—in which he and his wife posed with dead animals including a giraffe, a leopard, a warthog, an impala, and the four baboons—to more than 100 friends and acquaintances, including former commissioner Fred Trevey. Trevey told Fischer that he was dismayed by the email, especially since Idaho's hunter education manual advises youth to "refrain from taking photos of the kill and from vividly describing the kill within earshot of non-hunters." Former commissioner Keith Stonebraker tells NBC he found the email "nauseating." "I thought, 'Why in the world would anybody want to kill a family of baboons?'" he says. "It just made no sense at all." (This Kentucky woman sparked outrage by posing with a giraffe she killed in South Africa.)

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