The convoluted story of the creation of a hybrid sheep known as the Montana Mountain King may finally have come to an end.
On Monday, eighty-one year old Arthur “Jack” Schubarth of Vaughn, Montana, was sentenced to six months in federal prison for illegally using tissue and testicles from Marco Polo sheep taken in Kyrgyzstan in 2013 and using them to inseminate domestic sheep to create hybrids to be sold to hunting ranches.
According to reports, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris “struggled” to come up with a sentence for Schubarth due to his age and lack of a criminal record. Ultimately, he arrived at the prison sentence, a $20,000 fine and $4,000 payment to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Earlier this year Schubarth plead guilty to a Lacey Act violations resulting from his having paid a third-party to store tissues that he acquired from an illegally imported, hunter-harvested carcass. He then had DNA from that sheep used to clone more sheep.
Ultimately, Schubarth collected 165 Marco Polo sheep embryos -one of which became the Montana Mountain King. Along the way, he and his co-conspirators managed to acquire falsified veterinary certificates from state livestock boards to make transporting the sheep easier. Those statements described the cloned sheep as New Mexico Dahl, bighorn sheep or domestic sheep.
Schubarth’s accomplices in the “Frankensheep” scheme included three Texans, a Minnesotan and another Montanan. They have all been charged with violations related to the “alternative livestock husbandry” industry.
Monday’s sentencing brings a controversial trial to a close, but it does nothing to calm the controversies over canned hunting, more specifically the question after harvesting an animal on a hunting-specific facility: do you own all the animal (including the “parts” from which females could be impregnated with the trophy genes) or only the trophy portions?
Now that Arthur Schubarth’s case has been concluded, Montana Mountain King, shown here in this photo from Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks, will be transferred from an accredited USFWS facility to a zoo. Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks photo.
There’s also the matter of the Montana Mountain King - the actual ram produced in the scheme. He was confiscated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services and is currently being held in an accredited facility until he can be transferred to a zoo.
Schubarth is no stranger to the hunting world. Since 1987, he owned and operated Sun River Enterprises, LLC an “alternative livestock ranch” that buys, sells and breeds alternative livestock including mountain sheep, mountain goats and other ungulates, primarily for private hunting preserves.
Meanwhile, from Maine down to Texas, dockworkers are making their unhappiness known by striking. The International Longshoremen’s Association wants a new master contract, and they’ve effectively shut down 36 U-S shipping ports to make the message clear for those who don’t understand their concerns.
Norfolk’s normally busy cranes (top) are idle as ships like these on the James River in Boston (bottom) begin to back up as the ILA strike gets underway. OWDN photos.
It’s the first time since 1977 the union has struck, but the workers are concerned at the levels of automation that would appear poised to eliminate many of their jobs. Consequently, they want a new contract that puts a “total ban” on the automation of cranes, gates and shipping container-moving trucks.
According to the industry news outlet construction dive.com the walkout will almost immediately impact construction materials, heavy machinery, food, vehicles and chemicals. Across the Gulf Coast, the impact on natural gas supplies is expected to be minimal as the ILA has little, if any, involvement in the natural gas transmission business.
Surprisingly, it doesn’t take a long strike to have a very long follow-on impact. According to officials at Gilbane, a national construction company, a week-long strike could create a backlog that takes four-to-six weeks to clear. A two-week strike could extend the backups into 2025.
Yes, it’s safe to say that every industry will be impacted. With new Chinese export restrictions on antimony, the ammunition business will most likely be impacted, along with tungsten, germanium, magnesium, barite, most rare earths, indium, graphite, gallium, and arsenic.
Antimony prices have already nearly doubled to a record $22,750 per ton this year. Only one US company, Parpetua Resources, is looking to produce antimony domestically. The effort has been supported by the Pentagon and U.S. Export-Import Bank, but opposition from environmental groups has delayed any potential production into 2028.
As if we didn’t already have enough on our plates, right?
We’ll keep you posted.
— Jim Shepherd
