Marie Beltran

A man struck a wolf with a snowmobile, taped the injured animal’s mouth shut and brought it into a bar, prompting moves to tighten Wyoming’s animal cruelty laws. Wyoming’s animal cruelty law does not currently apply to predators such as wolves. Under draft legislation that will be put in front of a legislative committee on Monday, people would still be able to intentionally run over wolves, but only if they use “all reasonable efforts” to kill it, either on impact or shortly afterwards. The bill does not specify how a surviving wolf is to be killed after it is intentionally struck. The fate of the wolf struck last winter in western Wyoming prompted scrutiny of the state’s policies

A Montana rancher was sentenced to six months in prison on Monday after cloning a "near threatened" sheep from Asia and then selling its offspring to shooting preserves, according to court documents. Arthur “Jack” Schubarth, 81, will spend six months in federal prison, with a 3-year supervised release and have to pay a $20,000 fine and a $4,000 community service payment for cloning the near-threatened Marco Polo sheep from the Asian country Kyrgyzstan. Schubarth was sentenced for committing two felonies, conspiracy to violate the Lacey Act and substantively violating the Lacey Act, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. The Lacey Act is a law that bans the trafficking of illegally taken wildlife, fish, or plants.