Rancher faces prison for trying to breed absolute unit of a sheep In a case that could have been lifted from a bad movie about a "mad scientist," a Montana rancher has pleaded guilty to wildlife trafficking charges in his quest to genetically engineer an ubersheep for hunting. Arthur "Jack" Schubarth, 80, of Vaughn, Montana, runs Schubarth Ranch. The business purchases and breeds various …
Cane toad.
Hedgehogs in New Zealand from England!
Japanese Knotwood
Killarney: The great rhododendron disaster, also lilies. Ireland has 66 regulated Invasive Alien Species of special concern.
There is even an Irish island inhabited by wallabies.
North American Grey Squirrels in Britain.
Zebra mussels in loads of places.
I'm suspicious of slugs, snails, squid, octopus and horseshoe crabs. A passing Alien ship?
More likely alongside roads and foot paths. The stuff that grows along river banks is more likely to be native species of plants only vaguely related to giant hogweed.
And personally, having messed with giant hogweed when I was younger, I never had a rash or skin irritation. Possibly one has to be susceptable.
And that "genetic material from sheep parts to ... create cloned embryos" turns out to be, literally, a load of bollocks. I'm guessing the Absolute Unit as described didn't give those up voluntarily.
I suspect it's easier to smuggle a platter of Mountain Oysters into a country than a live-and-kicking ram.
Baaah-Ram-Ewe!
Round here there is a problem with wild boar. Every now and then they have a boar hunt; stick a few signs on the roads warning of hunters, dress in camo, and then man and dog are carefully arrayed in hi-vis jackets so they don't accidentally shoot the wrong thing.
Until one escapes... All it takes is one escapee to breed. I wouldn't quite point at Jurassic Park (since that was frog DNA that supposedly allowed the dinos to change sex in a single-sex environment), but the point is the same. Ditto the analogy of another poster about the rabbits in Australia. Oh, and the cane toads (they were not for shooting, but they also bred like... er... the rabbits, and are now a pest in much of Oz).
Biosecurity is a big deal. Don't ever think of taking anything of biological origin that is not biologically inert to the Antipodes without declaring/quarantining it... you *will* be fined/prosecuted for endangering the biodiversity of the country you're visiting. Same goes for some African countries with concerns about F&M and other diseases that spread via dirt/spores.
This is true - obey the rules. Even if they will eventually damage the resilience of our ecosystem.
Species have been moving across those invisible national borders since the dawn of time and still do, naturally and artificially. One of the main reasons is climate change (there has actually been quite a lot of it). As climates change, flora and fauna have to move. Even trees move, by surviving and dying out in different places. As the pace of climate change increases, we will need to help species move.
In the last few centuries scientists catalogued species within national boundaries, and declared them to be 'native'. But nature never stops changing. The Canute option of only planting so-called 'native' species and wiping out nasty foreign invaders, coming over here, nicking our sunshine and soil, is crazy. That's not how nature works, and we need to learn from nature.
Yes, there have been some notoriously rampant species like Japanese knotweed and cane toads (nature sorts this out over time, but humans are impatient and panic). However species that are successful and aggressive are more likely to survive climate change. Red squirrels almost certainly will not in the UK, but greys are tougher little guys and probably will. Unless of course we wipe the greys out, the climate wipes the reds out, and we have none. Species that arrived from abroad before scientists drew the line in the sand have often done well: Buddleia is brilliant for butterflies and insect life, but isn't native to the UK. And it is an aggressive spreader.
The natural world copes with extreme period of climate by reducing diversity and running with a smaller mix of resilient predator and prey species. We need to learn from that too.
Some species need specific plants, some will adapt, but the majority just need plants that do the basic pollen, nectar and seed thing, regardless of what passport they hold. One thing is certain, they will have to be more resilient than most of our current 'natives' to survive. If we stick with 'native' species, most of them will die as the climate changes and the place will start to look like Mars in the summer.
And as for rewilding with things that died out hundreds of years ago - that is no different from the introduction of entirely foreign species. It's not a long-missing part of the puzzle, as humans and other species have changed the mix so much already. It sucks cash from much better projects but won't stop until a protective mother boar kills a child or two.
Australia probably needs to change its flora more than most countries as Eucalyptus trees and fire don't mix. Elsewhere, we need to plant species that provide us with local seasonal food, whilst ensuring that solar farms are hybrid - panels with underscrub or crops. So while it is a good idea to keep fire ants out, the puritanical protection of 'native species' and rewilding will both eventually be recognised as catastrophically bad ideas a few years and a few million quid down the line. Just wait and see.
Artificially introducing or, worse still, creating super-competitive species is very different from natural movements caused by environmental change.
However, the word that caught my eye was “trophy” - what kind of moron is proud of shooting a 5-foot wide sheep?
Species have gradually moved domains over millennia, and all the other species in the 'host' territory have time to adapt (or, as you point out, some will die out). Problems in particular biospheres happen when non-local species are introduced very suddenly over the course of years, and native species have no time to adapt and therefore very little chance to compete.
In this particular case I don't really think a new species of sheep *on ranches or hunted* would be causing any wildlife catastrophe, but if released into the wild (which could also happen accidentally), who knows? In this particular case, I think a large part of the offense wasn't just introducing a new species to the US, but trafficking in endangered species
《you *will* be fined/prosecuted for endangering the biodiversity of the country you're visiting》
And a good chance of having your capacity to threaten the integrity of the wikdlife species detached.
Thanks. New one on me. I assumed it translated into en_UK as total prat which didn't work in this context.
Can we have ft and lbs in m and kg for the tiny minority that are lumbered with the SI/metric system?
300lbs ~ 135kg 5ft ~ 1.5m
I could imagine a seriously agro Kyrgyzstan ram could cause dire damage to a gormless gun crazy.
These baa-lambs are in wild pig (in AU) class for size.
The whole story runs as though it were lifted from the cartoons - it only lacks Roger Ramjet, Felix the Cat as this fellow would be a contender up against Prof. Nutty Nut Meg in the Mad Scientist Oscars, and he would fit into Rocky and Bullwinkle below their more credible villains. :)
The bloke is 80 years old. I would have thought his appointment with his maker is close enough that he might be a little more reticent about expediting these creatures appointment with theirs for purely mercenary reasons.
But silly me! This is the US, where I understand CDOs in grandmothers are a thing, of which we speak.
Well, it's happened. I've finally lost the plot.
I've just read this article about some man making a dangerous hunting quarry even more dangerous by genetic engineering and breeding simply so idiots can kill things for sport.
However, whenever my brain read whatever animal it's talking about I just saw the word 'sheep'. (You know those little fluffy docile cloud with leg things)...
I'm going to ring the doctors.
WT? Clearly you have not handled commercial sheep. A stroppy ram or worse, b* Dorpers in a bad mood. I have to consistently remove individuals that show escape artist abilities to keep the flock mostly controllable so they dont contaminate next properties stud business of some sheep breed the Romans brought to Britain. Said removals taste delicious. My fear is that the rules may create even more docile voters who fail to rebel against the fake alternatives offered at every election in the ruins of the West.
> the word 'sheep'. (You know those little fluffy docile cloud with leg things)...
Ummm, Rocky Mountain 'sheep' are NOT Little Bo Peep's tame sheep. They don't stand in pasture but more often on the side of a cliff. While they prefer to walk away from strangers, they will turn on predators. Those horns are not just for hanging clothes but can rip you a new hole. They are a challenging hunt and I did not know they needed to be super-sized.
Wallabys in Scotland? Ah, some guy thought it was a good idea.
There is also prairie bison ("Buffalo") on Catalina Island. Brought in to shoot a western movie, no predators, Catalina humans are too laid-back to eat them all, they get to be a hazard.
But why worry? Japanese Knotweed WILL strangle the world soon.
I remember an account of a German "boar hunt" from around 1910. The boars were released into a long wire mesh tunnel from which they couldn't escape and the "hunters" took pot shots at them as they ran down it. If they got to the end of the tunnel alive, they were put back into it again. Aren't humans nice!
Then there was Napoleon and the rabbits...
A guy wants to set up a bunny hunt so Napoleon and his pals could have a little fun, so he rounds up hundreds bred by the local farmers... but they don't scatter, as wild ones would do, they advance on the king and his nobles expecting to be ticked and fed carrots... Napoleon retreats to his carriage
> I'm looking forward to the film inspired by this.
Then you should check out:
Black Sheep (2006)
"An experiment in genetic engineering turns harmless sheep into bloodthirsty killers that terrorize a sprawling New Zealand farm."
It's good fun, like an early Peter Jackson (Bad Taste, Brain Dead, pre Lord of the Rings) film.
The bold hunter cradles the rifle, wipes clean the telescopic sight, kneeling on a platform at the top of a 20 foot metal tower, his blood chilled at the hideous sound of bleeting beneath him. To his left, a line of similarly equipped men, canvas hats darkening with nervous sweat. To his right, nothing; his flank unprotected, he knows his is the honour to guard the line.
Then comes the signal they have all been waiting for, to start the running and their bloody sport:
Phweeet. Phwet. Phwet. "Away lad, right, right". Phwee-eee-eet. " Arbuckle, git bloody gate open, useless boy".
"The mad rabbits of Yorkshire were an enigma. Nobody knew where they had come from or what had caused them. There were the usual mutation theories, and it had even been claimed that MicroWar had developed a breed of killer rabbits (for possible sabotage of collective farming in Commieland) and that one had somehow escaped. But, even without checking, Uncle Dan knew that MicroWar were not that good. Strange. Perhaps the little beasties had been dining on carrots drenched with a pesticide which induced unnatural aggression.
Whatever the explanation, the fact remained that the mad rabbits were quite a sensation. They had already killed several sheep, dogs and foxes. And it had been reported only yesterday that they had forced one local farmer to climb up a tree to escape their attention.
So far NaTel Research had not come up with any reasonable explanation. Three or four months ago, a nature boy - one of Uncle Dan's millions of admirers - had written to the programme about a rabbit attacking and destroying a viper. And since then the number of odd happenings had multiplied. Perhaps the mad rabbits had also multiplied. Perhaps there had been only one killer rabbit - some kind of freak - to begin with.
Research, though being unable to shed light on the origins of mad rabbits, had discovered a further unusual happening, also in Yorkshire. Apparently, some time before the first mad rabbit was sighted, a tiger had been killed by a spaniel not very far away. Uncle Dan had been mildly tempted to work the tiger story into his programme, perhaps hinting at some kind of unnatural upheaval in the animal kingdom, but then he decided against it. Bad vid. You couldn't show a non-existent tiger.
But you could show mad rabbits. Uncle Dan was happy.
There they were, the dear little things, at least a hundred of them, gambolling on the hillside about two hundred metres away. Presently, the NaTel beaters would drive them towards Uncle Dan and the vid crews. Uncle Dan hoped the rabbits would be co-operative. NaTel had supplied a number of small dogs - guaranteed rabbit chasers all - in the hopes that the rabbits would be persuaded to destroy them.
The plan was to drive the rabbits, turn the dogs loose among them, and get as much of the result on tape as possible. Uncle Dan would speak a small piece with the rabbits approaching in the background. Then, depending how it all went, he could be cut in again at various points.
The day was cold, but Uncle Dan's electrically heated Norfolk jacket kept him wonderfully warm, as also did the three or four triple whiskies he had taken the preceaution of consuming. He stroked his bright red beard lovingly. Yes, he reflected, he really was happy. Since leaving MicroWar he had acquired wealth, reputation and twenty million half-witted fans. Life had been good to him. Almost too good.
As he thought briefly of MicroWar, a name floated up from the deeps of memory. Greylaw. Uncle Dan scratched his head. He was puzzled. Why should he think of Greylaw?
Ah, yes, it all came back now. A month or two ago, or was it a year or two - not that it mattered - he had met this MicroWar type in the NaTel bar. Chatted about old times. Greylaw and that damn silly Tranquillity project. Then the MicroWar type fell flat on his face. Probably pissed as a newt.
Uncle Dan's reflections were brought to an end by a signal that the beaters - armed with rattles, cymbals and electronic flash - were driving the rabbits.
Uncle Dan observed proceedings for a moment or two. More than a hundred, he thought. Possibly two hundred. Perhaps the little bastards were popping up out of the ground. The rabbits were moving slowly. They did not seem too concerned about all the noise and the lines of men. But they were beginning to move more quickly now, and were frisking about a bit.
Uncle Dan became anxious. They looked just like ordinary rabbits. In a short time the dogs would be released. What if they just mangled the rabbits? Shit! What a waste of time.
Feeling suddenly depressed, Uncle Dan signalled vid one and got thumbs up. He turned to it with a broad smile on his homely weatherbeaten face.
"Ahoy, there, me hearties!" he boomed genially. "This is your very own Uncle Dan, alone in the desolate wilds of Yorkshire, the real Laurence Olivier country, where Emily Brontë once wrote The Bride of Frankenstein and John Braine penned his immortal Room At the Wuthering Heights. Yes, folks, we are in country rich with passion and mystery, a surprising land where the rabbits have all gone mad. Join your very own Uncle Dan, and watch yet another beauty of Mother Nature."
The rabbits were now less than fifty metres away. It was time for the dogs. Uncle Dan raised his hand to his beard. Vid one cut to the rabbits. The dogs were let loose.
So was all hell.
The dogs ran at the rabbits. The rabbits surrounded the dogs. The dogs barked and snapped and were permitted a few moments of glorious disbelief before scores of rabbits coolly and systematically leaped at them and, regardless of casualties, kicked and stamped them into the ground. It was all over in a few seconds - with the death howls of the dogs fading into the wind - but it was wonderful vid.
Uncle Dan was happy once more. Life had been good to him. But Life, alas, as far as Uncle Dan was concerned, had just run out of unnatural generosity. And what followed was also wonderful vid. But not for Beauties of Mother Nature. Only for the Late Late Horrorshow.
Perhaps the death of a few dogs had simply acted as a stimulus to the rabbits' blood lust. Perhaps the mad rabbits did not approve of the cut of Uncle Dan's Norfolk jacket. Perhaps they were offended by his bright red beard. Or perhaps he was simply the next nearest target.
Before anyone could do anything, they charged; Vid one, about five paces from Uncle Dan, had the presence of mind to drop everything and run. Uncle Dan's reactions were slower.
Although he had the advantage of the late dogs in that he already knew that the rabbits were unhinged, like the dogs he simply could not emotionally accept the fact of their unhingement.
He stood and stared.
But not for long. The rabbits were all about him. They made high, curious, squeaky noises like wet fingers rubbed hard on glass. They leaped at his legs, they ran between his feet, and they deliberately tripped him up. He fell heavily, flattening three or four in the process.
But the rest of the rabbits did not seem to care. It was all part of the show. They swarmed all over him, so that he looked like a seethig, writhing, screaming mountain of palpitating fur. They kicked him and scratched him and bit him and stamped upon him.
And within less than a minute, while a few brave NaTel souls were clubbing peripheral attackers with vids, tripods and any items of equipment that were handy, the mad rabbits of Yorkshire had kicked a still incredulous Uncle Dan to death." -- from Kronk by Edmund Cooper
I wonder if any of The Pythons read that (They claim to have got the idea from a carving in Notre Dame of a Knight fleeing a rabbit).
TIM: Behold the cave of Caerbannog!
ARTHUR: Right! Keep me covered.
GALAHAD: What with?
ARTHUR: W-- just keep me covered.
TIM: Too late!
[dramatic chord]
ARTHUR: What?
TIM: There he is!
ARTHUR: Where?
TIM: There!
ARTHUR: What, behind the rabbit?
TIM: It is the rabbit.
ARTHUR: You silly sod!
TIM: What?
ARTHUR: You got us all worked up!
TIM: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR: Ohh.
TIM: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN: You tit! I soiled my armor I was so scared!
TIM: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!
GALAHAD: Get stuffed!
TIM: He'll do you up a treat, mate.
GALAHAD: Oh, yeah?
ROBIN: You mangy Scots git!
TIM: I'm warning you!
ROBIN: What's he do, nibble your bum?
TIM: He's got huge, sharp-- eh-- he can leap about-- look at the bones!
ARTHUR: Go on, Bors. Chop his head off!
BORS: Right! Silly little bleeder. One rabbit stew comin' right up!
TIM: Look!
[squeak]
BORS: Aaaugh!
[dramatic chord]
[clunk]
ARTHUR: Jesus Christ!
TIM: I warned you!
ROBIN: I done it again!
TIM: I warned you, but did you listen to me? Oh, no, you knew it all, didn't you? Oh, it's just a harmless little bunny, isn't it? Well, it's always the same. I always tell them--
ARTHUR: Oh, shut up!
TIM: Do they listen to me?
ARTHUR: Right!
TIM: Oh, no...
KNIGHTS: Charge!
[squeak squeak squeak]
KNIGHTS: Aaaaugh!, Aaaugh!, etc.
ARTHUR: Run away! Run away!
KNIGHTS: Run away! Run away!...
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But now in 'Great' Britain kids are doing it just for kicks. Brave new world.
When I followed the link, the headline on the linked page made me think the kids were using catapults to launch hapless animals into the air, whereupon said animals fell back to Earth and took impact damage. The previous Monty Python quotes primed me for that, I suppose. ('Round here, we call those boys' weapons, "slingshots".)
It could take years to investigate, pre-trial hearings and get to trial, this 80 year old guy will likely be dead before it gets to trial or any sentence is handed down.
What will be the impact of resurrecting the wholly mammoth by using modern day elephants DNA? Suppose they succeed and the wholly mammoth and modern day elephants breed. Is that not the same endangerment of the species? We have no idea what the temperament of a wholly mammoth is, modern day foods could it eat, it's interaction with man or other species...etc. Seeing the same pattern as what they are prosecuting this man for..
Any Woolly Mammoths produced would absolutely be kept in Zoos, etc. and not released back into the wild. For exactly this reason. You cant release an animal into an environment not prepared for it without some really messed up consequences.
I'm not quite sure what a wholly mammoth is though, is it perhaps a whole mammoth? Or a cross between a woolly mammoth and a holy mammoth? :P
"By their work they created breeds of cattle and horse – later named "Heck cattle" and "Heck horse" respectively, after their creators – that are not sufficiently similar to their ancestors to be called a successful resurrection, although Heinz and Lutz Heck believed they had "resurrected" the breeds by their efforts.[3] Lutz was interested in hunting and he chose fierce fighting breeds of cattle for his breeding experiments. He saw a plan to release his reconstituted aurochs into Hermann Göring’s private hunting reserves planned (as part of Generalplan Ost) in the Bialowieza forest between Poland and Belarus."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lutz_Heck
-> Mine's the one leather one, made from re-extinced species
Heck Cattle, which have a really bad attitude and attack people for fun*. So also known as Evil Nazis UberCows from the Dawn of Time. Which would make a great title for a film I'd definitely watch, or a game I'd definitely play.
* Which given what humans have done to cows down the centuries is fair enough.
but went about it wrongly. Cross with the most vicious mountain big horn sheep. Hunters have to rock climb (no safety gear) to hunt said sheep. With swords and spears only. Cull both species at same time and a great challenge worth bragging about. Especially if they have to eat it all except horns and guts to be let out of hunting reserve ?
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