An 81-year-old Montana man was sentenced Monday to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from large sheep hunted in Central Asia and the U.S. to create hybrid sheep for captive trophy hunting in Texas and Minnesota.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence for Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana. He said he weighed Schubarth’s age and lack of a criminal record with a sentence that would deter anyone else from trying to “change the genetic makeup of the creatures” on the earth.
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Schubarth’s attorney, Jason Holden, said cloning the giant Marco Polo sheep hunted in Kyrgyzstan in 2013 has ruined his client’s “life, reputation and family.”
“I think this has broken him,” Holden said.
Holden, in seeking a probationary sentence, argued that Schubarth was a hard-working man who has always cared for animals and did something that no one else could have done in cloning the giant sheep, which he named Montana Mountain King or MMK.
True, but on the other hand, this would have been based on a protected species and could reduce the demand of wild poaching.