The US has a cloned sheep smuggling problem

The same document alleges that one of MMK’s calves was transported from Minnesota to Schubarth’s ranch in Montana in May 2019. In July of the following year, Schubarth agreed to sell 11 of MMK’s grandchildren for a total of $13,200 and one of MMK’s children, a sheep named Montana Black Magic, for $10,000. Schubarth is also alleged to have sold another Marco Polo hybrid sheep to a man living in South Dakota.

At least there is a record of only one sheep

We are talking about MMK itself. The sheep had initially been taken to a Zoological Association of America-accredited facility in Oregon.says Christina Meister, of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Public Affairs Office. On October 2, MMK was flown across the country to the Rosamond Gifford Zoo in Syracuse, New York, where she will be housed long-term. “MMK is expected to be on display in mid-November,” Meister emphasizes. The USFWS declined to respond to other questions posed by WIRED.

The fate of the other sheep is uncertain: The four men charged in these interrelated cases signed plea agreements requiring them to quarantine any sheep they own that contain argali genes. The agreements also require the men to “give up all ownership rights” to the sheep and allow the USFWS to sterilize the animals. The men also have to submit autopsy reports when any of the sheep die.

“It was a very interesting case,” says Chris Tenoglia, an attorney who represented Michael Ball, accused of false labeling of wildlife under the Lacey Act, which prohibits the transportation, trade and mislabeling of certain species. Ball pleaded guilty to violating the Lacey Act and was ordered to serve one year of probation and pay a $20,000 fine. Tenoglia states that Ball euthanized the nine sheep he had in his possession and that they were crossed with the cloned sheep.

“Ball is into animal husbandry and breeding, and he didn’t want one of the cloned sheep he had to accidentally interbreed with the cattle he had on hand. He was worried that no matter how hard he tried to keep them separate, it wouldn’t work, and he didn’t want to. have problems, assuming that could happen in the future,” Tenoglia wrote in an email to WIRED.

Attorney Carl Jensen represented another defendant, Riley Niewenhuis, who pleaded guilty to a traffic charge under the Lacey Act. Niewenhuis was sentenced to 12 months’ probation and fined $20,000. Jensen says he does not know if Niewenhuis has any of the hybrid sheep in his possession, but he is sure that “he is doing everything possible to comply with what the government demanded of him.”

If you want to clone your pet, this is the woman you should call

“I try to prepare clients so they don’t expect to have the same pet again. The new pet isn’t going to know who you are right off the bat.”

Biological and regulatory issues

Monique Sosnowski, a wildlife crime and security analyst at Farmingdale State College in New York, says trafficking cases involving animal cloning are quite unusual. It raises all sorts of strange questions: like whether cloned sheep should be considered an endangered or invasive species. According to Tenoglia, one of the government’s concerns was that if MMK hatchlings were left in the wild, they could dominate and outcompete native US species. When WIRED asked the Department of Justice (DOJ) about this concern, spokesperson Matthew Nies said the office “had nothing to add.”

The Schubarth case also raises the question of whether regulations on cloning companies should be tightened to ensure they are not involved in experiments on endangered species. The practice is becoming fashionable: thousands of dogs, cats and horses have already been cloned in the United States. Legal documents allege that in 2015, Schubarth paid a $4,200 deposit to sign a “sheep cloning contract” to experiment with a Marco Polo sheep illegally trafficked into the United States.