An 80-year-old man in Montana pleaded guilty Tuesday to two felony wildlife crimes involving his plan to let paying customers hunt sheep on private ranches. But these weren’t just any old sheep. They were “massive hybrid sheep” created by illegally importing animal parts from central Asia, cloning the sheep, and then breeding an enormous hybrid species.
Someone is going to go over this law with a fine toothed comb.
Importing endangered animals? Clearly illegal.
Killing endangered animals and bringing in parts? Clearly illegal.
Bringing in endangered animal DNA and making more endangered animals? 🤔
I dunno… I’m not well versed enough in law, ecology, or animal husbandry. It really feels like this is a new area.
Let’s take the hunting angle out of it. Say I brought in Siberian Tiger DNA for the express purpose of creating and breeding tigers and hybrids in captivity… wouldn’t that just be species preservation?
The problem is that if any get out, they could interbreed with the native bighorn sheep and pollute their gene pool.
I don’t think Tigers can breed with sheep
/s
Yeah, I can’t see why they wouldn’t be able to do this. As long as you’re not abusing and torturing them I don’t see a problem. Just make sure the animals don’t escape into the wild.