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Can fossil ivory save elephants?

By Guy Gugliotta
The Washington Post

NAOKI SUZUKI / AP, 2003 A frozen head of a 10,000-year-old woolly mammoth was excavated from the Siberian tundra near the Russian town of Yakutsk in October 2003. Fossil ivory from woolly mammoths' tusks is the only raw ivory legally available since a ban on elephant ivory sales 15 years ago.

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Perhaps a bargain. Fossil ivory, from woolly mammoths that died between 20,000 and 5,000 years ago, is the only raw ivory legally available since uncontrolled killing of African elephants led to an international ban on modern ivory sales 15 years ago.

And at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) that ended yesterday in Bangkok, at least one prominent delegate suggested that mammoth ivory might permanently supply the ivory market, making it unnecessary to kill elephants.

But this may not be as Solomonic a solution as it seems. The substitution of mammoth ivory for elephant ivory presents an unusual example of how conservation of one limited resource might potentially lead to the uncontrolled, and perhaps catastrophic, exploitation of another.

"From a paleontologist's perspective (taking mammoth tusks) means the destruction of specimens," said Ross McPhee, curator of vertebrate zoology at New York's American Museum of Natural History. "People take the tusks and never tell anybody where they found them. And it's not like we'll ever see them again."

Still, for the foreseeable future, it appears that mammoth ivory will continue to be the only game in town. CITES delegates in Bangkok refused to grant Namibia an annual quota for legal elephant ivory sales and also won an agreement from African nations to crack down on sales of poached ivory.

The only potential opening for elephant ivory is a pending authorization for four southern African countries to sell 50 tons from existing inventory to Japan in a one-time auction, but only after implementation of an international warning system to monitor illegal elephant killings.

World Wildlife Fund Vice President Ginette Hemley said the network — despite difficulties funding it — should be completed in 2005, and the sale will probably take place the following year.

The monitors purportedly will be able to tell if the auction prompts poachers to kill elephants and then "launder" the ivory at the auction. Resource Economist Erwin Bulte, of Tilburg University in the Netherlands, said this is unlikely, but acknowledged that researchers need the data that the monitors can provide.

"I think (controlled sales) is the way to go for the short- and medium-term," said Erwin, lead author of an article on elephant conservation in today's issue of the journal Science, but noted that at least two of his co-authors "don't agree."

Ivory has been used for thousands of years to make everything from crude Ice Age tools to exquisite carvings and jewelry. The biggest consumers today, and for centuries, have been Asian countries, especially China and Japan.
 
McPhee said exploitation of mammoth ivory began with Russian Siberia's colonization in the 1600s. Mammoths, elephant-like behemoths standing 11 feet tall, went extinct about 5,000 years ago after several millennia of decline, probably caused by climate change, hunting or both.

"There's been a huge trade," said McPhee, a mammal specialist who has worked in the Siberian Arctic. "It was immediately clear that mammoth ivory was as valuable as any item up there."

In 1987 Pierre Paré, president of Calgary-based Fossils Canada Ltd., bought seven tons of mammoth ivory from the Soviet Union to get tusks for museum restoration. Two years later the convention — created by international treaty to control trade in rare animals and plants — banned sales of elephant ivory.

"There was a massive slaughter in Africa during the 1980s, and at its peak 100 tons of ivory were going to Hong Kong and Japan every year," Hemley said. "The elephant population dropped from 1.2 million animals to 500,000 or 600,000 by the end of the decade."

Thanks to his timely purchase, Paré has prospered, opening a line of jewelry to go with restorations and bulk sales of ivory tusks and chunks.

"It's not a huge business, but it's been growing since the ban," said Paré, who said he sells between $700,000 and $1 million in ivory each year. "It's a good alternative to modern ivory, and it's not going to endanger any species."

Mammoth ivory, often fossilized with minerals that can give it a spectacular range of colors, has its own market with its own range of products. Paré sells small pieces of jewelry — charms, pins and earrings — starting at less than $100, while a pair of double-twist tusks, fully restored, can cost $75,000.