US man jailed for cloning giant sheep for trophy hunting

Marco Polo argali are the world's largest sheep

A breeder in Montana has been jailed for six months for cloning a giant sheep species and selling its offspring at high prices for trophy hunting.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 81, illegally imported body parts of Marco Polo argali sheep, the world's largest, from Kyrgyzstan, and sent the genetic material to a lab to create cloned embryos, court documents say.

The cloning resulted in a single male which he named “Montana Mountain King” or MMK.

MMK was then used to inseminate ewes to be sold to shooting preserves, also known as captive hunting operations.

"This was an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies," the justice department's Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) said in a statement.

Marco Polo argali males can weigh more than 135kg (300 lbs) and have horns that span more than 1.5m (5ft).

The sheep, native to the mountains of the Pamir region of Central Asia, are protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites).

They are prohibited in Montana to protect native sheep from disease - as well as to prevent the creation of hybrids.

Schubarth owns Sun River Enterprises LLC, a ranch which breeds and sells "alternative livestock" to private hunting preserves, where people shoot the animals for a fee, prosecutors said.

Court documents say he sold semen from MMK along with hybrid sheep to three people in Texas.

A Minnesota resident also brought his sheep to Schubarth's ranch for them to be inseminated.

An MMK offspring apparently fetched $10,000 (£7,500).

District Court Judge Brian Morris said he struggled to come up with a sentence, but had to deter anyone else from trying to "change the genetic makeup of the creatures" on the planet.

In addition to the jail sentence, Schubarth was given a $20,000 fine.

He said he was ashamed of what he had done.

"I got my normal mindset clouded by my enthusiasm and looked for any grey area in the law to make the best sheep I could for this sheep industry," he said. "My family has never been broke, but we are now."

MMK will be sent to a zoo.