Montana man faces sentencing for cloning giant sheep, breeding it | AP News
Montana man faces sentencing for cloning giant sheep, breeding it | AP News
An 81-year-old Montana man is expected to be sentenced for using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to illegally create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunts in Texas and Minnesota.
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Fun!
Still trying to figure out exactly what was wrong about what he did. A linked article says:
"...the defendant violated the Lacey Act that restricts wildlife trafficking and prohibits the sale of falsely labeled wildlife."
I guess specifically bringing embryos/sperm of a banned animal into Montana, more than the cloning operation.
Sheep breeds that are not allowed in Montana were brought into the state as part of the conspiracy, including 43 sheep from Texas, prosecutors said.
Dude sold to "trophy hunters" and brought in animals that will outcompete and replace native species.
It's a pretty big deal ecologically, and was done for just about the worst reasons
And it wasn't even super unique sheep, it was a couple states away
Also unsure how much "cloning" went into pulling sperm off removed testicles...
In October 2019, court records said, Schubarth paid a hunting guide $400 for the testicles of a trophy-sized Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that had been harvested in Montana and then extracted and sold the semen, court records said.
Yeah, I read this article and a similar one the other day and it sure sounds to me like he just cross bred some sheep and none of the people involved know what cloning is. He apparently cloned the sheep, but then used it to breed hybrids? That he sold based on percent of the originals DNA? If you can clone in the first place (doubtful, obviously), why are you then breeding anything?
One small rant I’d like to make as this article glosses over his bullshit of a sentence. This country is absolutely fucking terrible about enforcing poaching, wildlife trafficking, or any other number of clear degradations to our natural environment. Ignoring the fact that he most likely didn’t even hybridize anything, because ‘paid off a hunter for the ram’s testicle’ doesn’t inspire confidence as to the care of the sperm cells; he still was illegally trafficking wild animals and their body parts with the intent of raising invasive animals for distribution. And yet, he not only isn’t even getting a slap on the wrist, the judge in the case is fawning over him like he outsmarted all those fancy college kids by cloning a sheep in his barn with nothing more than his own wits and god on his side.
I was reading and rereading that bad article to figure out what the problem was. Thanks for that.
it bears a striking resemblance to the story behind Africanized honey bees.
the risk is the same as any other international transport and release of a non native species; invasive species that damage the ecosystem. that these are creatures that don't exist anywhere and don't have a native habitat just makes them that much harder to predict. this was all clearly done without any thoughts about the repercussions or how to avoid them.