An 80-year-old man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to two felony wildlife crimes connected to his years-long efforts to create giant hybrid sheep using cloning and illegal insemination, federal prosecutors said.

Arthur “Jack” Schubarth was creating the hybrid sheep as a target for hunters at private facilities, officials said. He violated both international and federal law, Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said.

“This was an audacious scheme to create massive hybrid sheep species to be sold and hunted as trophies,” Kim said in a statement.

Schubarth, who owns a 215-acre alternative livestock ranch in Montana, conspired with several others starting in 2013, officials said. They were working to create a large hybrid species of sheep to sell to game ranches.

The Montana man brought parts of the Marco Polo argali sheep, which can weigh more than 300 pounds, into the U.S. from Kyrgyzstan without declaring the importation, authorities said. The sheep species is protected internationally by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and protected domestically by the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The species, which is the largest type of sheep in the world, is prohibited in Montana as a way of protecting native sheep from disease and hybridization.

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