New ivory worries

Abstract

The ban on the trade in ivory is under new threat from an unusual source: ancient ivory from woolly mammoths. The bodies of thousands of mammoths have been found preserved in the frozen Siberian tundra, and the ivory tusks are the best preserved feature of them all. But the trade in ivory from the ancient tusks is now thought to be a risk for the future of African elephants, conservationists fear. One report suggests that as much as 60 tonnes of Siberian mammoth tusks are being exported from Russia every year, mostly to China, where they end up in the workshops of its flourishing ivory-carve trade, being turned into brooches, pendants, figurines and thousands of other ivory objects. Conservationists are concerned that this legal trade could be used as a front for the laundering of illegally poached elephant ivory, thereby fuelling the killing of elephants. The trade in African elephant ivory was outlawed by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in 1989, to halt the steep decline in elephant numbers. “Wild elephant populations were decimated by the ivory trade. By the time the 1989 Cites ban came into force, Africa's elephants had been reduced by more than 50 per cent,” says Mark Jones, programmes director at Care for the Wild, an international wildlife charity which commissioned the mammoth ivory report. “Poaching continues to threaten wild elephants. Anything that encourages the continued demand for ivory products, whether mammoth ivory or elephant ivory, could possibly exacerbate this threat.” The report was carried out by Edmond and Chrysee Martin, and paints a picture of a valuable business in extinct animals — worth more than $20 million per year. Their report points out that trade in woolly mammoth ivory has been going on between Russia and the rest of Asia for many years, but declined sharply in the communist years from 1917 to 1991.