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Travel A road trip in Burgundy reveals far more than fine wine. Travel My Hometown In L. Subscriber Exclusive Content. Why are people so dang obsessed with Mars? How viruses shape our world. The era of greyhound racing in the U. But as the ground thaws, Siberia is revealing its ancient treasure hoard faster than ever. 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 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. 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. Many take out bank loans to finance the petrol needed for the pumps. 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. For most collectors in this impoverished region, though, an entire season of backbreaking labour in the mud will end up losing them money. 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. 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.
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. Sold 18" Woolly Mammoth Tusk. Sold 6'8" Woolly Mammoth Tusk. Sold Amazing Mammoth Tusk - Sold Huge Woolly Mammoth Tusk - 9'4" lbs. Unit 19, Vaughan ON. Once the tusks are collected the harvesters sell the ivory to traders. The Russian-language internet is full of trading company sites that offer legal export of mammoth ivory from Russia to anywhere in the world.
At the end of summer, Chinese traders travel deep into Siberia, says Dmitry, to meet with brigadas — teams of workers harvesting ivory. Brigada will by then have done months of back-breaking work in the wilderness. The trader says: I will buy it all for 15, — right now! Brigadas often need money desperately to cover their expenses, and they sell in bulk, on the spot, for cheap. You must also declare the exact place where it was collected, the vehicle it was transported out of the forest on, what flight it then was on… The whole process, for one shipment, takes about two months.
The controls are getting stricter and stricter, he adds. In November , four tons of mammoth ivory were confiscated by Russian customs for incorrect paperwork. The exporters had under-reported the high quality of the ivory, which made it of cultural value.
Quality can vary greatly, because every mammoth tusk has a unique history of several millennia in the ground. D is rotten stuff. Intact tusks, with no cracks, are very valuable, but a pair of tusks from the same mammoth is the most valuable.
These are auctioned off. The ban was strictly enforced. Outlets trading in ivory and carving workshops where shut down in a nationwide crackdown, driving down both elephant ivory prices and the enthusiasm of Chinese buyers.
The ban also affected the mammoth ivory trade, explains Dmitry. When we were selling it on Taobao, customers would ask us — can I be sure this is not from an elephant? Will I get in trouble for buying this? According to Dmitry, the first fall in price after the peak was due to oversupply driven by Chinese traders travelling to Yakutia to buy ivory in bulk. Some expected that, with elephant ivory bans in place, legal mammoth ivory would become a substitute for illegal elephant ivory, soaking up pent-up demand and driving prices back up.
Dmitry dismisses the idea, saying that mammoth ivory simply does not have the same appeal:. Slon ivory is beautifully white, but mamont is always a little yellowish.
When mammoth ivory is worked, it can even smell like rotten teeth! While there are still slon around, people will buy slon.
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