In September, A Montana man has been sentenced to six months in prison for trafficking a clone of the world’s largest sheep species. According to court documents, Arthur Schubart trafficked body parts of the nearly extinct Marco Polo Argali sheep from Kyrgyzstan to the United States, contracted the lab in 2015, and later He claims to have created a cloned sheep he named the Montana Mountain King (MMK). Documents say Schubart then used MMK’s semen to impregnate ewes and sell the offspring, which carried Marco Polo Algali’s genes, to big game hunters.
It’s a strange case. This is likely the second time that an American has been charged with a wildlife crime related to animal cloning. (In 2011, a man was fined $1.5 million in a case involving the illegal purchase and transportation of deer, and he also sold smuggled deer and nearly $1 million in deer semen, which he intended to use to clone white-tailed deer.) Investigators believe that he was ordered to be extradited.
There is another strange element to Schubart’s story. Potentially dozens of MMK descendants are currently at large in the United States. These sheep, which contain the MMK gene, are defined as contraband in a small number of plea deals signed by men who allegedly purchased the sheep from Schubart or transported them to a ranch in Montana to impregnate them. There is. What’s not clear is how many sheep were wandering and what exactly happened to them.
However, there are some clues in the legal documents. One legal filing in the lawsuit against Schubart alleges that in November 2018, a person transported 26 ewes to Schubart’s ranch in Montana for insemination with MMK semen, and a year later the same person claims to have transported a further 48 ewes. In July 2020, two other people transported 43 more sheep to Schubart’s ranch, according to the same document. This is at least a few dozen sheep that may have carried MMK offspring, and each sheep may have given birth to several lambs.
The document also states that one of MMK’s offspring was transferred from Minnesota to Schubarth’s ranch in Montana in May 2019. Then, in July 2020, Schubarth agreed to sell 11 of MMK’s grandchildren and one of MMK’s offspring, a sheep named Montana, for a total of $13,200. Black Magic, $10,000. Schubart is also said to have sold another Marco Polo hybrid sheep to a man in South Dakota.
It includes at least one sheep: MMK himself. Christina Meister of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s public affairs office said the sheep was initially taken to an American Zoological Society-accredited facility in Oregon. On October 2nd, MMK was flown across the United States to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, where he will be kept for an extended period of time. Meister said MMK will be on display at the zoo in mid-November. (USFWS declined to answer other questions posed by WIRED.)
(Tag translation) Science
