A Montana man pleaded guilty to two felony wildlife crimes – a conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act and substantively violating the Lacey Act – as part of an almost decade-long effort to create giant sheep hybrids in the United States with an aim to sell the species to captive hunting facilities.
This article is crazy. So, in 2013, this guy imported dismembered parts from a highly-endangered breed of giant Central Asian sheep from Kyrgyzstan and didn’t declare it. Then, conspiring with at least 5 other individuals, sent it to a lab, cloned it, and birthed a new one. He then proceeded to hybridize it with other sheep to create some sort of gigantic Übersheep that he could sell in great number to private hunting ranches at a premium where, presumably, rich idiots could could pay to… hunt them?
Anyway, since the original giant sheep from Kyrgyzstan are endangered and protected by international conservation law, US Endangered Species Act, and Montana state law, not to mention the various import laws, interstate livestock shipping laws, and laws regarding cloning this guy and his cohort violated, he’s facing a ton of felonies at the state and federal level, at least.
i kinda gotta give them credit for having a solid plan. i mean, thats some serious follow-through…
but hunting sheep? sheeeeeeep?
Gigantic mutant Übersheep!
We’re probably not talking about the cute hornless domesticated puffballs you’re probably picturing when you hear “sheep,” but something more like a bighorn sheep, but honestly even a domesticated ram can be pretty intimidating.
And really, canned hunting like this aside, why not hunt sheep? They’re not all that different from a deer, probably the most popular type of game animals at least in the US if not the world. They’re both ruminate ungulates with horns growing out of their head, depending on the species they can be in roughly the same weight class as deer or even larger, and sheep can be pretty well-adapted to some environments that deer aren’t as well-suited for, so they can present more of or at least a different kind of challenge to hunters (which is part of the appeal for some hunters)
I don’t support what this guy did or the type of hunting industry he’s involved in, but hunting wild sheep isn’t exactly a novel concept, and is fairly popular in areas where wild sheep are present.
I know in the US it’s something a lot of hunters would like to do if they had the opportunity, but those opportunities are limited (and rightfully so) for conservation reasons, most states have a lottery system to get a bighorn tag because the demand for the tags well exceeds the amount of hunting the sheep population can actually sustain, meaning you often have a less than 1% chance of getting a tag the first time you apply for one, so I guess I understand the appeal of this kind of hunting as a way around the tag system for wild sheep, even if I don’t really agree with it.
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I know, right? What the fuck?
I’m actually kinda impressed
Shady af, but gotta admit that’s a crazy plan
I’m honestly kind of impressed, even if it’s scummy.
America so violent we need to invent new things to kill.
So if I hear you right, the guy has a working protocol for cloning a highly-endngered species developed and working in, I presume, moderately well-funded lab at best? That sounds somewhat interesting for conservationist efforts.
Cloning sheep isn’t new. Iirc, they were one of the first complex organism to be cloned.
Dolly
Well sure, but the differences between species are not necessarily negligible, so a tested protocol is definitely valuable. Should someone have a good idea and funding for how to use it, of course.
While I find you silver-lining approach to this situation… charming, some might find how disconnected you seem to be from the results and application of the development of this particular protocol to be… disconcerting.
Compared to what else is happening in the world, other than its weirdness and entertainment value, the whole affair seems to me to be of very little consequence. Someone messed with a few individual endangered animals in a failed attempt to provide a niche entertainment. So what. If it helps save an entire species, it seems like the more important bit of the whole story to me. Although I can definitely see your point. I should probably note I didn’t take the time to read the article, so it is entirely possible I missed some awful bits or some such.
hmmm, moral relativism. not my cup of tea. just because other things are worse doesn’t make something no longer bad or wrong. we don’t live in a vacuum. the things people do still have consequences even when other people do things that may or may not be worse. not to mention that your response, itself, comes off as disconcertingly solipsistic.
genetically engineering a mutant/hybrid species of sheep just to get rich selling them to private firms who use them for captive hunting seems particularly grubby and craven-- yet you’re willing to ignore this - even sugar-coat it and outright dismiss both the shocking moral and ethical issues, let alone the multiple state, federal, and international laws broken - just for the sake of your own curiosity and to pursue your own interests.
if this weren’t troublesome enough, there’s the fact that, after having it repeatedly pointed out that, in fact, none of this was used for preservation of the original endangered species, but some monstrous hybrid was created for captive hunting, itself a disgusting practice that, by definition, is - at least - counterproductive to the goals of conservationism and, at worst, antithetical to it, you couldn’t be bothered by that element of it whatsoever, let alone the shocking steps which led to those results nor those which motivated them.
So, to answer your question, “so what?”
That’s what. I am informing you that what These people did was both morally and ethically reprehensible, and is not something to be admired.
I’m not saying it isn’t bad. It is, but it seems to be handled by the law enforcement, pretty much wrapped up and not something I should be concerned about.
So, I actually read the article. The possibility of contaminating local populations of wild sheep is very bad, and the possibility didn’t occur to me before reading simply because wild, uncontaminated populations of big herbivores are barely a thing in Europe, sadly. Other than that, it’s just some illegal trafficking which is no worse than any other and, in fact, much better than most other illegal animal trafficking, I think. It sounds like no living animals actually suffered during the trafficking.
As for the creation of a new kind of sheep, no genetic engineering was taking place. It was a normal breeding (OK, assisted breeding, insemination, but for agricultural standards, it was absolutely normal). Getting the male to produce the sperm was done in an unusual manner. I admit I severely underestimated advancement of cloning in agriculture. The article sounds like he simply sent some biological material to the lab and got embryos back. Come to think of it, I heard about cloning horses and bulls for this precise purpose, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. Anyway, that pretty much invalidates my initial idea that the cloning protocol might be useful. All the more so since the species is not actually endangered.
Regarding the captive hunting, while I might have some reservations about that, it actually sounds pretty much fine for the animals. I don’t quite know how it works, but I imagine that it means the animals in some fenced, but rather large and mostly wild enclosure, where they can do mostly what they please, until someone comes along and shoots them (or not). In my book, while not ideal, that’s pretty much OK, compared to commercial pig farming or taking baby calves away from their mothers to get more milk. Especially since the scale of captive hunting must be much, much smaller. If I wanted to be enraged about something bad happening to animals, I would try to pick a place where animals suffer most and in largest numbers, according to my moral compass. If your preferences are different, that’s alright and it’s great that you actually care about this this much. If you know enough context and find it worthwhile, all the better. Especially if you actually try and do something about it.
TLDR:
trafficking animals - bad, but obviously handled
endangering local populations - very bad, fortunately stopped in this particular case
cloning - surprisingly routine, it seems
breeding - the only problem is that they bred forbidden species, otherwise pretty standard
captive hunting - not a big issue in my opinion, but I understand why others might feel differently
EDIT:
I think I might as well respond to some of your criticism directed at me
I don’t see that pointed out anywhere. But it would hardly matter, since I suggested that it might be valuable for future efforts, when I thought there might be some need for that. Also, why was the hybrid monstrous? Is a mule monstrous? It’s just a guess, but I think your understanding of the word hybrid comes more from horror movies than biology. Also, no mutant was created anywhere, at least not more than is normal for such biological processes, such as your birth, and mine.
It was not my intention to sugar-coat anything. But if someone does something bad and possible outcome of it might do some good, I say it would be wrong not to use it. And could you please elaborate on what in particular you find so shocking?
Wow. I hope you didn’t sprain something with those mental gymnastics and all of those false equivalences in order to dismiss the outrageous moral and ethical implications of despicable things these people did.
Some assembly required.
Sounds like wild boar all over again
So cloning endagered species is a crime? Isn’t law supposed to protect them from foing enxtinct instead?