The climate crisis has sparked a Siberian mammoth tusk gold rush
The Arctic permafrost is thawing, revealing millions of buried mammoth skeletons. But the rush for mammoth ivory could put elephants in danger all over again
lancing into the 50-metre-deep hole the two tusk hunters smiled. Together, they heaved out a caramel-coloured mammoth tusk from the soil where it had been frozen for at least 10,000 years. Their dog, too, seemed to be interested in the find. “Because it’s been locked in the ice for that long it still smelled of the meat, it still smelled of the animal,” says Amos Chapple, who spent three weeks photographing mammoth tusk hunters at work in the Siberian region of Yakutia.The tusk hunters cleaned their find with dry grass and quickly wrapped it in cling film to keep it moist and preserve valuable weight that would push up its price when it came to selling it. Then the precious cargo, along with two other tusks, went on a winding five hour speedboat journey down a river in northeastern Siberia. The 65kg relic was later sold for $34,000 (£26,800) to a Chinese dealer waiting in the tusk hunters’ village, earning them a total of around $100,000 (£77,000) in just eight days. Everything they left behind – mammoth skulls and bones – was consumed by the elements.
The frozen land of Siberia is rapidly thawing. Parts of it are warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet. The permafrost – soil that remains frozen year-round – is protected by a surface layer of dirt and sediment that thaws in summer and refreezes in winter. But in 2018, some parts of this layer did not freeze at all, leaving the permafrost exposed to even warmer temperatures than usual. For decades, residents of this frozen land, where temperatures regularly dip below minus 30 degrees Celsius, would often stumble upon the remnants of woolly mammoths that died out 10,000 years ago. But as the ground thaws, Siberia is revealing its ancient treasure horde faster than ever. Now, fuelled by Chinese demand for ivory, tusk hunters are racing to retrieve so-called “ice ivory” from the Siberian permafrost.
An estimated 80 per cent of Siberian mammoth tusks end up in mainland China, via Hong Kong, where they are carved and turned into elaborate sculptures and trinkets. Russia exported 72 tonnes of mammoth tusk in 2017 but exports have dropped off as a growing underground trade in tusks appears to be eating into the official trade. While collectors can obtain licences, they increasingly complain of pressure from the authorities who confiscate their finds and demand high tariffs. To avoid losing business, many are sidestepping existing regulations and selling their tusks quickly but for less money to Chinese dealers who come to buy them directly. Some see the legal mammoth trade as a relief valve that gives consumers an alternative to elephant ivory. But is the shadowy trade in the extinct species putting even more pressure on one of the world’s most endangered animals?
Tusk hunters use fire hoses to blast away the mud surrounding mammoth skeletons
By Barclay Bram
Mammoth hunting is an enticing profession for the daring or desperate residents of Yakutia. All of the tusk hunters Chapple encountered in the isolated camp were local to the area, but each one had a different motivation that brought them to search beneath the permafrost. One was a self-made millionaire through the mammoth tusk trade, some had full-time jobs during the rest of the year, and others broke into the business more recently after watching viral videos that made the excavations look like a quick win. Everybody knows the drill: pick a spot and blast away. “A lot of these guys are in quite desperate situations,” says Chapple. Many take out bank loans to finance the petrol needed for the pumps. “If they can just get one of these tusks, it can change their lives.”
Some use powerful firefighter pumps to melt away the ice and bore deep underground. Others burrow labyrinthine caverns under the ground and navigate below the dripping mud with huge chunks of ice hanging over them. “All it takes is a roof collapse and they’re entombed forever,” says Chapple, who photographed the “mammoth hunt” for Radio Free Europe, a US government-funded broadcaster in Eastern Europe. It’s dangerous but lucrative work where a lucky few could strike it rich. For most collectors in this impoverished region, though, an entire season of backbreaking labour in the mud will end up losing them money.
Along this 120km stretch of river, the only movement interrupting the excavations are occasional patrol boats with environmental protection officers accompanied by police looking for hunters who don’t have a licence to sell their finds legally. If word gets out that a boat is approaching, “they throw camouflage netting over the equipment and melt away far into the forest like Chechen guerrillas,” says Chapple.
Although the trade is still not fully regulated, searching for and selling mammoth tusks is completely legal in Russia as long as collectors obtain a licence. Alexei – a licensed dealer who asked to be identified by a pseudonym – has been exporting mammoth tusks for seven years. In the past two years, his business has been struggling as the black market really started taking off. With Russian authorities slowing down the legal trade, his Chinese customers are starting to turn to smugglers for their supply of mammoth ivory instead. “We suffer big losses,” he says. “Almost two tonnes of legally mined material were taken from me for inspection. A year-and-a-half has passed and the tusks are still being examined.”
Confiscating ivory from licensed collectors and dragging out checks for years may be an attempt to better control the trade, says Alexei, but it risks achieving quite the opposite. “It kills the legal market in Yakutia and pushes people to do illegal business.” Due to the nature of the business, it is difficult to estimate how many tusks are exported illegally, but Alexei believes it could be as much as 50 per cent today, compared with 20 per cent in 2016. These underhand deals not only make it impossible for authorities to keep the trade in check, there is one other beneficiary that misses out on the ancient treasures: science.
By Nicole Kobie
Since the 1990s, the Academy of Sciences of the Sakha (Yakutia) Republic (ASSR) has received many rare specimens from licensed ivory collectors that it could not otherwise afford, including carcasses of woolly mammoth, woolly rhino and cave lion cubs. Where collectors might have left the skulls and bones of prehistoric megafauna scattered around excavation sites in the past, they now know their value and hand them over to scientists for free. “We have an agreement with these guys,” says Valerii Plotnikov, a senior researcher at the ASSR. A collector remains the owner and receives a cut of the profits when the specimens are exhibited abroad.
Last year, a Yakutia resident unearthed a severed wolf head estimated to be around 40,000 years old. With a full head of hair, fangs, tongue and even brain tissue largely intact, Plotnikov’s team could use DNA analysis and CT scanners – a tool that uses x-rays to create a 360-degree image of internal organs and tissues – to study this ancient predator and compare the genetic information to that of modern wolves.
As an adviser to the Russian Ministry of Culture, Plotnikov takes photos and measurements of the mammoth tusks the collectors bring into Yakutsk in order to estimate their age, size and weight – and determine their cultural value. This allows collectors and dealers to request a licence to export the tusks from Moscow to China. It’s a months-long process that has now become even more complex. Three months ago airport police in Yakutsk confiscated several tonnes of tusks from a licensed collector and are still holding them. The slow checks end up losing collectors money. As a result, many start selling their goods on the black market, and the long-established trading companies that used to buy tusks in bulk and sell them on to China are now being undercut by illegal traffickers. “If the whole business becomes illegal, scientists will not have a chance to take measurements of these tusks,” says Plotnikov. “It’s terrible, but what can we do?” A single tusk can sell for tens of thousands of pounds
wired.co.uk
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