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An 80-year-old Montana rancher’s money-making scheme to create giant sheep hybrids with the hope of selling them to captive hunting facilities has landed him in trouble with the law.

The scheme sounds like the perfect plot for a John Grisham novel, with cloning, trafficking, forgery, hybrid animals, and trophy hunters all part of the crazy story.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, the owner of an 87-hectare ranch in Montana smuggled body parts of the world’s largest sheep subspecies, the Marco Polo sheep (Ovis ammon polii), from their native Kyrgyzstan and trafficked them into the US without declaring them to authorities.

The Marco Polo sheep can weigh over 136 kilograms and have horns that span more than 1.5 metres, making them an alluring target for trophy hunters. Unfortunately for the Frankenfarmer, they’re protected by several wildlife protection laws and banned in Montana to protect native sheep populations.

The sly rancher however sent genetic material from the Marco Polo sheep body parts to a lab to create cloned embryos. The embryos were implanted in ewes on his ranch, producing male offspring that he called “Montana Mountain King” or MMK. MMK semen was then used to artificially impregnate several other species of ewes, which were also prohibited in Montana, to create huge hybrid sheep.

To pull it off, Schubarth and his conspirators forged several veterinary certificates to lie about the sheep species. He also illegally obtained genetic material from Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep that were hunted in the wild around Montana.

Federal officials have now hunted down Schubarth and his accomplices for violating the Lacey Act, a conservation law that combats the illegal trafficking of wildlife.

“This was an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies. In pursuit of this scheme, Schubarth violated international law and the Lacey Act, both of which protect the viability and health of native populations of animals,” Todd Kim, Assistant Attorney General at the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, said in the statement.

On March 12, he pled guilty to two felony wildlife crimes: a conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act and substantively violating the Lacey Act. Each count carries a maximum penalty of five years’ jail time and a $250,000 (R4.6 million) fine. Schubarth is set to be sentenced in July.

America has enough problems without having to also deal with a huge hybrid Frankensheep running around Montana.

[source:ifls]