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An 80-year-old Montana rancher pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday for creating "giant hybrid sheep" he and his five co-conspirators would sell to hunting preserves for exorbitant prices, authorities said.
They are big prizes for trophy hunters, who travel to Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Mongolia to hunt them.
In short:
Defendant worked to traffic Marco Polo Sheep parts from Kyrgyzstan, clone sheep, illegally inseminate ewes to create hybrids and traffic Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep parts.
To create the giant sheep he sent genetic material from the argali parts he illegally received from Kyrgyzstan to a third-party lab to generate cloned embryos. Then he used artificial breeding procedures to implant the 165 cloned Marco Polo embryos into female sheep on his ranch.
After that he impregnate other female sheep that were illegally possessed in Montana to create "hybrid animals".
His goal was to create a larger and more valuable species of sheep to sell to captive hunting facilities, primarily in Texas.
He also sold his giant sheep semen directly to sheep breeders in other U.S. states.
This was an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies. He also sold mountain sheep, mountain goats and various ungulates primarily to captive hunting facilities.
Polo argali, natives to the high elevations of the Pamir region of Central Asia, are prohibited in the State of Montana to protect native sheep from disease and hybridization.
I'm a little confused by this story. He's in federal court, but it says this was prohibited by the state of Montana. Is breeding the sheep illegal in the US or just in some states? Could he legally do this in another state?
I don't mind people who hunt for food or to protect their property, but I think poorly of people just hunting for a trophy. Hunting a captive animal for a trophy wall does not impress me. I'm glad this guy was caught.
I'm a little confused by this story. He's in federal court, but it says this was prohibited by the state of Montana. Is breeding the sheep illegal in the US or just in some states? Could he legally do this in another state?
Many aspects of the crimes committed were violations of federal law.
Ovis polii aka: Marco Polo argali is a CITES Appendix II listed species. International commerce/trade is restricted at the national level in order to protect the species from exploitation (such as overhunting and poaching) in its native range. You have smuggling of animal parts/genetic materials across international borders which is a CITES treaty violation. Source countries as well as the USA are CITES signatory nations. Then there's illegal transport of animal materials across state lines within the USA which would violate the Lacey Act. That's also federal law.
Obviously if you're smuggling, you're bypassing the necessary importation inspections and permits. There may be USDA violations as well due to the potential disease exposure (not only to native sheep but to other native ungulates and domestic hoofstock) spread over multiple areas and illegal genetic contamination.
The source nations may also prosecute at the national level on their ends.
Last edited by Parnassia; 03-16-2024 at 04:54 PM..
Many aspects of the crimes committed were violations of federal law.
Ovis polii aka: Marco Polo argali is a CITES Appendix II listed species. International commerce/trade is restricted at the national level in order to protect the species from exploitation (such as overhunting and poaching) in its native range. You have smuggling of animal parts/genetic materials across international borders which is a CITES treaty violation. Source countries as well as the USA are CITES signatory nations. Then there's illegal transport of animal materials across state lines within the USA which would violate the Lacey Act. That's also federal law.
Obviously if you're smuggling, you're bypassing the necessary importation inspections and permits. There may be USDA violations as well due to exposing native sheep, possibly other wild ungulates and domestic hoofstock to exotic infectious pathogens/parasites. Not to mention threats to native sheep resulting from illegal hybridization.
The source nations may also prosecute at the national level on their ends.
And so what? A sheep rancher is breeding bigger sheep with bigger horns for the canned bighorn hunts. As long as he is not misrepresenting them as endangered American Bighorn Sheep, which would be fraud, I can't see anything illegal or suspicious about it.
If a hunter wants to pay big money to go out onto a ranch and shoot a domestically raised animal, more power to him and more power to the rancher who has found a way to wrest a profit out of his ranch. It's hard to keep the ranches going with expenses that can be higher than income.
And the article makes no sense. You can not clone sheep using dead sheep parts to inseminate ewes. More than likely if anything about this story is true, he was importing frozen semen. But the entire story is fishy. There is nothing illegal about breeding bigger sheep or bigger horns on sheep. Nor is there anything illegal about selling big sheep to game farms nor is her anything illegal about charging large fees o hunters who want to hunt them.
And so what? A sheep rancher is breeding bigger sheep with bigger horns for the canned bighorn hunts. As long as he is not misrepresenting them as endangered American Bighorn Sheep, which would be fraud, I can't see anything illegal or suspicious about it.
If a hunter wants to pay big money to go out onto a ranch and shoot a domestically raised animal, more power to him and more power to the rancher who has found a way to wrest a profit out of his ranch. It's hard to keep the ranches going with expenses that can be higher than income.
And the article makes no sense. You can not clone sheep using dead sheep parts to inseminate ewes. More than likely if anything about this story is true, he was importing frozen semen. But the entire story is fishy. There is nothing illegal about breeding bigger sheep or bigger horns on sheep. Nor is there anything illegal about selling big sheep to game farms nor is her anything illegal about charging large fees o hunters who want to hunt them.
The source of this DNA he's using to produce those big sheep is the problem here. In terms of international wildlife trade which this was, proving legal origin matters. It is not legal to smuggle exotic animal parts (and that includes products produced from animal parts such as semen) across international or state lines. I'm 99.9% sure the guy never applied for or was issued any required importation permits. He may have falsified applications he did make which would be fraud. Permits require review, such as verifying that the animal part was legally obtained in the source country. Chances are nothing legal occurred, which puts wild argali in their own native range at risk.
There are two other potential problems though they are more of a worse case scenario:
1. The smuggled animal parts carry some exotic infectious disease which could expose any sheep he inseminated to a pathogen NA sheep have no resistance to. Goodbye native sheep, potentially goodbye to other ungulates they come in contact with. Yes, it's a long shot but exotic zoonoses outbreaks have happened like this before. Surely you've heard of Brucellosis, right? It was brought to N America courtesy of infected cattle imported from Europe!
2. Hybrid sheep he produces escape and breed with pure NA wild sheep, potentially creating free ranging hybrids no one intended. Unless his hunting clients are OK shooting their trophies in a barrel, just how contained do you imagine his hybrids are going to be? Contaminating a wild gene pool (especially a species that's already under pressure or classified as T&E) with something that doesn't belong there tends to be a biological no-no. Yes, that's happened before too.
Last edited by Parnassia; 03-18-2024 at 01:52 PM..
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