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On February 7, he was arrested in Sonora Ángelo or Luis Ángelo, for the crime of rustling. He entered without authorization a hunting ranch located in the municipality of Carbó. There he killed an eight year old stallion bighorn sheep. The ranch workers were the ones who realized that a copy was missing. They then began their search and shortly after found part of his remains. The skull and fore and hind limbs were missing. The perpetrator of the death of said animal, a Peruvian citizen of the United States, was found because he published several photos of the lifeless animal on a social network, showing it as a trophy and carrying weapons for hunting. The specimen was part of the state program for the recovery and reproduction of the species. The offender was brought before a judge. The penalty he imposed on her is unknown.
It was not just about the crime of rustling. According to the Federal Penal Code, a penalty of one to nine years in prison and for the equivalent of 300 to 3,000 days a fine is imposed on anyone who illegally carries out hunting, fishing or capture activities with an unauthorized means, of any copy of a species of wildlife. Or put their biological viability at risk. And the bighorn is under special protection according to NOM-059-Semarnat-2010.
Due to its scientific, cultural and beauty importance, the sheep is appreciated regionally, nationally and internationally. For at least half a century, the Mexican subspecies of the so-called Ovis canadensis They appear on the government agenda, in that of those interested in avoiding their extinction and in that of those who aspire to kill some specimen. It is worth economically for being the most sought after North American game mammal.
Roberto Martínez Gallardo, who was a researcher at the Autonomous University of Baja California, pointed out that the Ovis canadensis It is the largest of the North American sheep. In the wild it lives up to 11 or 12 years. And in captivity up to 20. It has seven subspecies, three of them in Mexico, where they inhabit the Sonoran mountains and those of the Baja California peninsula. In 1990, at the request of the society of this entity, President Carlos Salinas decreed a total ban on this species for two years, since its number was decreasing dangerously. It was also agreed that the state universities would carry out studies in order to have an accurate diagnosis on the sheep. The ban was complied with, but not the studies due to lack of support to develop them.
It is worth remembering how at the end of 1996 there was great indignation in Baja California because the teacher Julia Carabias, then Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources and Fisheries (Semarnap), had promised not to auction permits to hunt Cimarrón specimens, since she did not have the studies that would allow us to know its status. But the National Institute of Ecology (INE), chaired by Mr. Gabriel Quadri, authorized the auction of three permits, one of which was made effective at the Hilton hotel in Reno, United States. The INE authorities hoped to sell it for $300,000. They only got 129 thousand. That auction served to show conflicting procedures between officials of the same unit, but it allowed policies to be established to guarantee the life of the sheep.
Their number has increased since then thanks to a conservation policy in Sonora and Baja California Sur, through Wildlife Management and Use Units (UMA). Not so much in Baja California, where there is illegal hunting. In addition, there has been support, although insufficient, for the investigations that have been postponed so many times; a Wildlife Council was established and a diversification and protection program for the rural areas where the animal lives was developed.
Each year the number of permits for the hunting season is fixed. It varies between 48 and 50 for wild life specimens, and from 100 to 110 for those in captivity. The cost of the permit ranges from 35,000 to 70,000 dollars. This has given value to the maroon, to the environment in which it lives and to the peasants avoiding its illegal hunting.
Meanwhile, other species in Mexico are in danger of becoming extinct due to the lack of effective conservation measures.
