Federal prosecutors say a Montana rancher illegally used tissue and testicles from wild sheep that were killed by hunters in central Asia and the U.S. to breed “giant” sheep hybrids for sale to private hunting preserves in Texas.

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.

  • INeedMana@lemmy.world
    22·
    4 months ago

    Captive animal facilities where game species can be raised and hunted were banned in Montana under a 2000 ballot initiative

    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

    • MareOfNights@discuss.tchncs.de
      9·
      4 months ago

      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.

      • INeedMana@lemmy.world
        6·
        4 months ago

        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

        • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
          4·
          4 months ago

          Part of it is also importing animal tissue (and sperm) without the proper paperwork and approval.

          That’s a BIG no-no.

          • jaybone@lemmy.world
            3·
            4 months ago

            Yeah I seem to remember some kind of global illness thing recently. Probably best to avoid that happening again.

          • INeedMana@lemmy.world
            1·
            4 months ago

            I did. I don’t get how the creation of the breed was the illegal part and not the creating “shooting range”

            • Ajen@sh.itjust.works
              2·
              4 months ago

              From the article:

              Male argali sheep can top 300 pounds with horns up to 5 feet long, according to officials, making them prized among some hunters. They are protected under international convention as a threatened species and outlawed for import into Montana to protect native sheep from disease and hybridization.

              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.