Brave New World

 

 

 

A MONTANA MAN has been charged and sentenced to six months in prison for trafficking and conspiracy under federal law for cloning a Marco Polo sheep as well as breeding and selling its offspring and DNA across several states, including…you guessed it…Texas.

In addition to his prison sentence, Arthur Schubarth, 81, of Vaughn, Montana, was ordered to pay $24,200 in fines and  assessments according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Lacey Act prohibits interstate trade in wildlife that has been taken, possessed, transported or sold in violation of federal or state law. The Lacey Act also prohibits the interstate sale of wildlife that has been falsely labeled.

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Marco Polo sheep are massive wild sheep that can grow to 400 plus pounds and sport horns measuring 65 inches. They inhabit Central Asia’s Pamir Mountains in Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan and can only be imported as trophies with strict permitting. 

That includes a Convention On the Trade Of Endangered Species (CITES) export permit from the country in which it was harvested in addition to a permit from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (“USFWS”) for import, possession, and other uses.

Schubarth and five others labeled in court documents as Persons A-E by federal officials, were allegedly involved in various activities. Three persons are from Texas, one from Montana, and another from Minnesota.

Court papers cite the following claims:

“On or about January 25, 2013, Person A entered the United States with biological tissue from a Marco Polo argali sheep that had been hunted in Kyrgyzstan. Person A did not declare the animal parts upon entry.

“On or about January 31, 2013, Schubarth entered into a ‘Cell Storage Agreement’ with a corporation for storage and preservation of the above-referenced tissue from a male ‘Marco Polo’ sheep named ‘Rocky.’

“On or about October 6, 2015, Schubarth entered into an “Ovine Cloning Contract” to clone an unspecified number of Marco Polo sheep from the tissue. He provided a deposit of $4,200 for the cloning.

“On or about November 22, 2016, Schubarth received 165 cloned Marco Polo embryos at the Schubarth Ranch.

“On or about May 15, 2017, a pure Marco Polo argali sheep male was born from the cloned embryos, which Schubarth named “Montana Mountain King.”

“Starting in 2018 at the latest, Schubarth harvested semen from M1\.1K in order to inseminate ewes via LAP-AI to create Marco Polo argali hybrid offspring.

Other notes from the case involved sending semen straws from MMK to Texas as well as transferring its offspring to Texas.

Upon sending a list of questions about the case to the Department of Justice, one of their public affairs specialists replied, “Thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing nature of the case, we don’t have any comment to pass along at this time.”

The cloning of the Marco Polo sheep, from an as yet undisclosed piece of tissue,  represents a significant advancement in cloning technology  since the successful cloning of Dolly the Sheep, the world’s first cloned mammal  in 1996.

This is the first significant case involving wildlife cloning, and it has potentially large implications across several areas of the wildlife industry beyond this issue with wild sheep.

I’m not saying everything related to cloning and genetic tinkering is bad, but I believe it’s my responsibility to address these issues and raise questions. The existence of a cloned Marco Polo sheep will not likely make any impact on native wildlife in this case.

After all, the Texas dall is a fertile hybrid of a mouflon and domestic stock—albeit done by putting male and females in a pen together back in the 1970s—not done in a test tube.

What concerns me is the cloning part.

The fact that someone can clone wildlife and do it across international borders is something we need to at least examine. Perhaps an even bigger potential concern is gene editing.

There are hogs that have had their genes edited to make them immune to the swine flu. They are being sold on the market as of 2024.

And I interviewed someone very high up in the cloning business that described how gene editing could be used to deal with feral hogs. In theory, scientists could edit genes of a bunch of sows and cause them to only produce boars. Eventually this would cause a population decrease and on island populations could potentially eliminate them in several generations.

I can see animal rights groups salivating at the chance to use such tactics to lessen wildlife populations without killing them.

Would whitetails in some areas be next?

Like I said, I don’t think all of this is bad.

The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has cloned a black-footed ferret from a cryogenically frozen specimen from the 1980s. It’s living in Colorado today and in fact they have not only cloned ferrets but the ferrets that were cloned have bred.

We need to pay attention to what’s going on in this arena. There can be good done like bringing back endangered species like the black-footed ferret or even extinct animals like the thylacine but there are things that raise huge questions about this technology. And Texas will be the epicenter of this since non-indigenous wildlife is not regulated for the most part.

We have entered a new age, and the technology is increasing so quickly, it could get ahead of hunters, fishermen and wildlife lovers before we know what’s really going on.

After all, it was only seven years ago when I predicted these kinds of things would be an issue in 10 years.

I was wrong. It’s  already happening in major ways.

 

Email Chester Moore at cmoore@fishgame.com