Trade in mammoth ivory, helped by global thaw, flourishes in Russia (original) (raw)

Europe|Trade in mammoth ivory, helped by global thaw, flourishes in Russia

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/world/europe/25iht-mammoth.4.11415717.html

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March 25, 2008

NOVY URENGOI, Russia — As Viktor Seliverstov works in his makeshift studio in this hardscrabble Siberian town he is enveloped in a cloud of ivory dust. His electric carving tool whirrs over the milky surface of teeth and tusks, as he whittles them into key fobs, knife handles and scrimshaw figurines.

But these are not whale bones or walrus tusks he is working on. The ivory in this part of the world comes from the remains of extinct woolly mammoths, as they emerge from the tundra where they have been frozen for thousands of years. It is a traditional Russian business that had all but gone extinct itself during the Soviet period but is flourishing now.

"A lot of people find ivory and don't know what to do with it," Seliverstov said of the residents of this town, where more than a few closets and old barns have a tusk or two in them.

Seliverstov recently paid $500 for about seven kilograms, or 16 pounds, of mammoth ivory from a family that had stashed it in a barn for years before realizing its value.

The trade, bolstered recently by global warming, which has melted the tundra and exposed more frozen remains, is not only legal but actually endorsed by conservationists. They note somewhat grudgingly that while the survival of elephants may be in question, it is already too late for mammoths. Mammoth ivory from Siberia, they say, meets some of the Asian demand for illegal elephant ivory and its trade should be encouraged.

While Ice Age ivory has been carved in Siberia since the 17th century, it was further helped by the international ban on the elephant ivory trade in the late 1980s. Russian exports of mammoth ivory - the only type of ivory legally imported into the United States - reached 40 tons last year, up from just 2 tons in 1989, said Aleksei Tikhonov, director of the Zoological Museum in St. Petersburg and an expert on mammoths.

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