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- An 80-year-old rancher was part of a 10-year conspiracy to cross-breed huge sheep for hunting, US officials said.
- Officials said Arthur Schubarth cloned a prized Central Asian argali sheep and sold its hybrid offspring.
- These huge sheep, sold for up to $10,000 each, fetched higher prices in the game market.
A Montana rancher, who pleaded guilty to two wildlife-related felonies, tried to illegally breed a "giant hybrid sheep" species for higher returns in the hunting market, the Justice Department said.
Arthur "Jack" Schubarth, 80, sought to create offshoots of a sheep species from Central Asia prized among hunters — the Marco Polo argali sheep, the DOJ said in a Tuesday release.
He became the center of a 10-year conspiracy that involved sheep cloning, cross-breeding, and illegal import of animal parts like testicles, per prosecutors.
By cross-breeding the argali with other sheep species, such as the Rocky Mountain bighorn, Schubarth sought to create huge sheep hybrids, per court documents seen by Business Insider.
The argali is valued because it's the largest living wildlife sheep breed on Earth, and is considered a near-threatened species by the US. It's hunted for sport due to its size and long horns.
These large argali-based cross-breeds would have fetched Schubarth higher prices in the hunting preserve market, prosecutors said.
Around 14.4 million people hunt in the US, and spend a combined $45.2 billion on their hunting activities, per the Fish and Wildlife Service's five-year report published in 2022.
Schubarth bred his offshoot species from a single male argali sheep he kept at his ranch and called the "Montana Mountain King," prosecutors said.
He came into possession of the "Montana Mountain King" by working in 2013 with another Montana resident, who was unnamed, to bring in biological tissue of an argali that was hunted in Kyrgyzstan.
Schubarth then spent $4,200 making cloned embryos from the tissue, and in 2017, his male argali was born, prosecutors said.
The rancher brought the "Montana Mountain King" to his property in Montana despite knowing he was breaking state animal trafficking laws, per court documents.
He then extracted semen from the "Montana Mountain King," using it to inseminate dozens of ewes of different species, prosecutors said.
According to court documents, Schubarth sold the male sheep's hybrid offspring for as high as $10,000 per animal for two years. Schubarth called the more pure-blooded specimens "Montana Black Magic," prosecutors said.
In 2019, he also bought testicles of a Rocky Mountain bighorn for $400 so he could extract semen and breed bighorns crossed with the offspring of"Montana Mountain King," per court documents.
Prosecutors said Schubarth also obtained false documents to hide that the sheep cross-breeds were illegal.
He was convicted on one count of violating the Lacey Act and one count of conspiring to violate the anti-wildlife trafficking law.
"This was an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies," said Ron Howell, Chief of Enforcement for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks, in the DOJ statement.
A lawyer for Schubarth did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by BI.