Terraka Garner
Life Editor
Social media has been explosive recently over whether or not trophy game hunting in Africa is considered helpful or harmful. Photographs of Sabrina Corgatelli posted on Facebook sparked the outbursts. Corgatelli is a senior accountant for grants and contracts accounting at Idaho State University.
Corgatelli posted a photo of herself posing with the corpse of a giraffe, of which she captioned “Day #2 I got a amazing old Giraffe. Such a amazing animal!! I couldn’t be any happier!! My emotion after getting him was a feeling I will never forget!!!”
In the wake of the controversey, many petitions were created calling for Corgatelli’s termination. One such petition appearing on Change.org has recieved over 6,000 signatures.
ISU issued a statement explaining that the actions of Corgatelli are personal and are not represtentative of the institution.
There was an abundance of response toward Corgatelli on her own Facebook page, as well as shared all throughout varying forms of social media.
As recently as August 12, an active member of Facebook, Steven Hovdesven commented on the Bengal Newspaper’s Facebook post asking, “How is your celebrity employee doing? Are you serving giraffe meat in the [cafeteria] today in honor of her [successful] kill?”
Corgatelli responded by posting a photograph of Leonardo Dicaprio which had written on it “To all the haters, stay tuned, you’re going to have so much more to be pissed about.”
There is now a Facebook page by the name of “Put an End to the Killing of Animals by Sabrina Corgatelli,” followed by the description “We want to honor all the animals who have died at the hands of this despicable human and do what we can to make sure this happens no more!” This page recently posted a link, asking students to help petition to get Corgatelli fired.
“Everything I’ve done here is legal, so how can you fault somebody because of their hobbies?” Corgatelli said in an interview with the Today Show. “How can an employer chastise you for something you do on your personal time that’s legally done?”
In response to the controversy, ISU Student and avid outdoorsman, Spencer Armstrong said, “In my eyes what [Corgatelli] did was perfectly legal. The way she portrayed herself on social media was less than impressive, but she did nothing wrong. Big game hunting is an integral part of the culture there as well as it helps provide funding to keep other actually endangered species safe from poachers and renegades that wont actually use the meat. If you’re going to be so anti-something why not pick something that is actually illegal? Like anti-poachers or anti-pirates or anti-drug lords. There are so many other, more important issues than an accountant who took a vacation to do some legal hunting.”
People that are anti-trophy hunting, according to the “In defense of animals advocates” are arguing that hunters are getting rid of what are allegedly already endangered species. They say that trophy hunters don’t care about the animals, but only care about killing the “biggest and the best.”
The host of the series, “Under Wild Skies,” Tony Makris, on the outdoor channel states that big game hunting feeds people. He said as soon as it’s killed, it’s consumed to prevent people from suffering starvation.
“Everybody just thinks we’re cold-hearted killers, and it’s not that. There is a connection with the animal, and just because we hunt them doesn’t mean we don’t have a respect for them. Giraffes are very dangerous animals,” said Corgatelli in an interview with Carson Daly from the Today show. “They could hurt you seriously very quickly.”
Sabrina Corgatelli could not be reached for comment.
