Please do not spend nearly a decade working to secretly clone endangered sheep in a bid to create giant Frankensheep hybrids for wealthy people to hunt for sport. It is very illegal, and the US government will make an example out of you.
Case in point: Arthur “Jack” Schubarth. The 80-year-old owner of a 215-acre “alternative livestock” ranch in Montana who the Justice Department reports pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two felony wildlife crimes—conspiracy to violate, as well as “substantively violating” the Lacey Act, a law enacted in 1900 to combat illegal animal trafficking.
Located in Vaughn, Montana, Schubarth Ranch is what’s known as a shooting preserve or game ranch, where people pay exorbitant amounts to hunt captive, often exotic animals like mountain goats. Or, in this case, extremely large, never-before-seen hybrid supersheep derived from Central Asia’s Ovis ammon polii, or the Marco Polo argali.
With a shoulder height as tall as 49-inches and horns over five-feet wide, the 300-pound Marco Polo argali is unequivocally the world’s largest sheep species. They are also extremely protected, and fall under the jurisdictions of both the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and the US Endangered Species Act. On top of that, they’re prohibited from the state of Montana in an effort to protect native species against disease and hybridization. Despite all this, Schubarth and at least five associates thought it wise to try breeding new sheep hybrid species using Marco Polo argali DNA in the hopes of jacking up hunting rates.
[Related: How hunting deer became a battle cry in conservation.]
Pulling it off apparently required serious scientific and international scheming. According to Justice Department officials, Schubarth secretly purchased “parts” of Marco Polo argali sheep from Kyrgyzstan in 2013, then arranged transportation of the biological samples to the US. Once here, Schubarth then tasked…
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