Ivory Ban Spurs Demand for Mammoths

Those who thought that a recent ban on the international ivory trade would save the elephant did not take into account the giant mammal’s ancient relative, the mammoth.

Since an international conference banned trade in elephant ivory last October, demand for mammoth tusks--still buried in the frozen wastes of northeastern Siberia--has soared, and wildlife experts fear that trade in mammoth ivory could be used as cover for illegal trade in elephant tusks.

Kenya-based conservationist Esmond Bradley Martin said that the Soviet Union, which sold five tons of mammoth ivory to India for $12 a pound in 1986, is now asking as much as $455 a pound from prospective Japanese buyers.

The mammoth, a type of hairy elephant that adapted to live in Arctic climates, died out about 10,000 years ago, but tens of thousands of mammoth carcasses have been preserved in Siberia’s permanently frozen sub-soil.

“Mammoth ivory affords substantial cover for unlawful elephant ivory, and the economists’ prediction that a ban would push the price up appears to be correct,” Ian Parker, an elephant expert based in Nairobi, said.

Mammoth ivory, which once sold at less than half the price of elephant ivory, is now three times more expensive.

Britain has defied the ban on ivory trading, which took effect Jan. 18, to allow Hong Kong, its colony, six more months to dispose of 670 tons of elephant tusks in stock.

Burundi, which until 1987 was the main center for trading poached ivory in Africa, is sitting on 86 tons of tusks.

Parker fears that these and other stocks will be shifted to other countries and then reappear in traditional markets labeled as mammoth ivory--for which no trading restrictions apply since the animal is extinct.

Mammoth ivory from Siberia has been traded extensively in Asia and northern Europe for at least 1,000 years.

According to English trader Basset Digby, who bought mammoth ivory in Siberia in the early years of this century, some 30 tons a year used to pass through the town of Yakutsk.

During the spring thaw in Siberia, he reported, ivory hunters would excavate tusks buried in frozen tundra that had been exposed by the erosion of river banks or the battering of the sea against the coast.

“Tusks are to be found at low tide, sometimes quite a grove of them sticking up in the sand, their drooping curves making them look, as the Yakuts graphically put it, like great candles that have been placed too near the fire,” Digby wrote.

Most of the mammoth carcasses have been reduced to skeletons, but some have been preserved perfectly in the ice.

“People have even eaten the meat and some mammoths have been found because of wolves and other animals tearing away pieces of the exposed flesh,” Parker said.

Even when the flesh decays, mammoth ivory tens of thousands of years old often remains in good condition.

“The cold has delayed the normal chemical and biological processes of decay, and much of the ivory is close to its original state,” Parker said.

There are differences between the tusks of mammoths and modern elephants.

“Mammoth ivory tends to be longer and more heavily curved,” Parker said. “The ivory is frequently stained by minerals in colors ranging from pure blue through pinks and reds to russets, some of which are very attractive.”

Mammoth ivory is also harder to carve than elephant ivory and cracks more easily, which historically made it cheaper.

“But the best mammoth ivory is virtually indistinguishable from elephant ivory to anyone but an expert,” Parker said.

The trade in mammoth tusks virtually disappeared after the 1917 Russian Revolution, but it re-emerged in the late 1980s as ivory prices soared and rampant poaching decimated the elephant population of Africa. By most estimates, Africa’s elephant population has halved to about 600,000 over the last 10 years.

Martin said traders in Japan, which consumes 40% of the world’s ivory, had told him that since they can no longer import elephant tusks, they are planning to negotiate imports of Soviet mammoth ivory, despite the high price. A delegation of Japanese ivory traders is to visit Moscow this month, he added.