Montana Man Gets Six Months for Cloning Giant Sheep

A rancher in Montana illegally used tissue and testicles from wild sheep to breed “giant” hybrids, which he planned to sell to private hunting grounds in Texas and Minnesota, where they would have been slaughtered by trophy hunters.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth had acquired biological tissue from a wild sheep killed in Kyrgyzstan belonging to the world’s largest species of wild sheep, the Marco Polo argali. According to court documents, Schubarth then procured cloned embryos of the animal from a lab, and implanted them in a ewe, resulting in a giant that Schubarth named “Montana Mountain King.”

Once the Mountain King was old enough, Schubart extracted its semen to artificially impregnate other ewes, resulting in even larger sheep, including one offspring that he tried to sell in Texas for $10,000. These shenanigans violated the Lacey Act, which restricts wildlife trafficking and prohibits the sale of falsely labeled wildlife.

Schubarth had pleaded guilty in March, agreeing in the plea deal to quarantine any other sheep containing Marco Polo argali genetics, as well any other bighorn sheep harvested from the wild. Captive animal facilities – canned hunts – where game species can be raised and hunted were banned in Montana in 2000, but remain legal in a few other states.

District Court Judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence for 81-year-old Schubarth, settling on six months in federal prison to dissuade anyone else from trying to “change the genetic makeup of the creatures” on the Earth, according to the AP.

Montana Mountain King, meanwhile, has been confiscated by the US Fish and Wildlife Services until he can be transferred to a zoo or other sanctuary. He got off easy.

Photo credit:  Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks