Mammoths may soon receive legal protection under wildlife conservation and trade restrictions, despite the fact that they have remained extinct for thousands of years.
It is the first long-extinct animal to be granted Protected Species status and thus restrict its trade, said John Scanlon, secretary general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES).
Ivory trade problems
Such a strange move is in fact connected with efforts to end the illegal trade in elephant tusks, not mammoth tusks. Due to climate change, the Siberian tundra continues to melt, and mammoth bones are opening at an unprecedented rate. This would not be a problem if the smugglers did not try to pass off the illegally finished tusks of elephants for the remains of their relatives - mammoths, since the trade in them is not prohibited. This has prompted conservationists to oppose the giant trading industry previously seen by many as an alternative to ivory.
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Legal loophole
However, there are concerns that smugglers are using the mammoth as a legal loophole to illegally smuggle elephant tusks, passing them off as mammoth bones. And although legal protection will be aimed at mammoths, it is needed in order to preserve the dwindling number of their close descendants.
The growing trade in mammoth tusks poses an indirect threat to the elephant population in the wild, as it creates an opportunity to trade in ivory. Therefore, greater control over the trade in mammoth tusks is needed to prevent this negative impact on the elephant population.
What happened to the mammoths?
The extinction of mammoths ended about 4 thousand years ago. While there are several theories as to why this happened, it is possible that these large herbivores were destroyed by the same hand that endangers modern elephants - humans. By some estimates, millions of these animals are now buried under the permafrost of Siberia.
The legal protection of mammoth tusks will be discussed next month at the CITES conference.