A Montana rancher illegally used tissue and testicles from wild sheep killed by hunters in central Asia and the U.S. to breed “giant” hybrid sheep for sale to private hunting preserves in Texas, according to court documents and federal prosecutors.
Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana pleaded guilty to felony charges of wildlife trafficking and conspiracy to traffic wildlife during an appearance Tuesday before a federal judge in Great Falls. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Court documents describe a yearslong conspiracy, beginning in 2013, in which Schubarth and at least five other people sought to create “giant sheep hybrids” by cross-breeding different species. Their goal was to garner high prices from hunting preserves where people shoot captive trophy game animals for a fee.
Using biological tissue obtained from a hunter who killed a wild sheep in Kyrgyzstan belonging to the world’s largest species of the animals — Marco Polo argali sheep — Schubarth procured cloned embryos of the animal from a lab, according to court documents.
I don’t really understand why that is illegal considering that it’s pretty similar to what the meat industry does. Maybe there are some laws to protect against invasive species, but he didn’t want to free them. Maybe dealing with poachers? Maybe he just needed a license?
CITES is the international treaty.
The offspring of wild animals are still very wild, even when crossbred with a domesticated breed. If they wanted to do it, they needed to get a licence to do it. That they did not get a licence suggests they knew they would not be granted one. Because breeding fancy animals for rich people to shoot is not a good justification.
Oh so being rich enough to hire legal counsel to get you the permit makes you qualified? Got it
Licensed breeders and keepers of captive wild animals are certainly wealthier than yer average Joe. But if you’re trying to argue that these offenders are being punished for their poverty, you really, really ought to read the article first.
I was like “who cares, cool science stuff. Free that man.” Until you said the above.
I think they took too big swig from twistonium bottle. Instead of “guy was organizing an illegal thing and it turned out he jumped through quite a few hoops to get to that point”, they made it sound like the breeding part was bad
Ah, ok.
On a separate note: Cloning giant sheep from poached ones sounds kinda like a supervillain and I now want to clone my own army of poached animals.
Oh yeah, I’m impressed that it works so well that he only needed like pieces from one killed animal to succeed
Part of it is also importing animal tissue (and sperm) without the proper paperwork and approval.
That’s a BIG no-no.
Yeah I seem to remember some kind of global illness thing recently. Probably best to avoid that happening again.
The breeding part is what violated state, federal, and international law.
The breeding itself? Because these are wild? Or do you need some license to breed animals?
You didn’t read the article, did you?
I did. I don’t get how the creation of the breed was the illegal part and not the creating “shooting range”
From the article:
It doesn’t matter that they wanted to shoot the hybrids. They could have been making a petting zoo and it would have still been illegal.
Both this and the meat industry should be illegal 🤷