Below Ivo Verheijen, a
Dutch student who joined
the team, draws the details
of a jawbone belonging to
a Pleistocene wolverine
(Gulo gulo)
top right Dutch student
Wouter Bonhof weighs a
woolly mammoth femur bone
that was kept in the base
camp as an ornamentbottom right The tusk
bounty collected by one
of the teams. Several tonnes
of mammoth ivory are
extracted every year from
the archipelagoRifles are usually slung across their
thickly padded shoulders, as there
is always a chance of a polar bear
encounter at this time of the seasonWhen ice is melting in the tundra, hundreds of
tusk hunters – who have been preparing for their
journey for almost a year – arrive on the islands to
begin the search for this rare ivory. Every year, tonnes
of ivory are collected on the Lyakhovsky Islands.
The hunters can spend up to five months living
in very basic conditions – in a base camp built
from wooden containers – in search of the remains.
Depending on a tusk’s condition, one can fetch
thousands of dollars. The tusks are typically sold
to dealers in Moscow who, in turn, sell the ivory to
Russian carvers, or ship the valuable wares to Hong
Kong. The larger tusks, refashioned into high art by
master carvers in China have reportedly fetched prices
as high as USD1.5 million per piece. However, since
China closed its official interior market, prices
have decreased dramatically.
While there is nothing illegal about the operations
of these tusk hunters – mammoth ivory can be legally
traded – some scientists don’t approve of the ivory
hunting, as they see it as threatening to their search for
important data. Each tusk, like a fingerprint, contains
valuable information. In a January 2017 interview with
the Siberian Times, Vladimir Pitulko, from the Institute
of the History of Material Culture of the Russian
Academy of Sciences, identified tusk hunting as a
form of “vandalism”, saying that the looting in the
Arctic has caused extensive palaeontological, geological
and archaeological damage.
However, there is an element of mutualism between
the two groups: When the tusk hunters find other
mammoth products, like hair or skeletons, they notify
the palaeontology teams, since there’s no conflict of
interest when it comes to artefacts that aren’t ivory.
Every day, both the scientists and the tusk hunters
patrol the tundra and beaches to mine the melting
permafrost. Rifles are usually slung across their
thickly padded shoulders, as there is always a chance of
a polar bear encounter at this time of the season. The
hunters walk hundreds of kilometres a week, shooting
ducks or geese when they chance upon a migrating
flock – offering a break in the monotony of their
otherwise rudimentary meals.
But experienced tusk hunters are not only
interested in ivory; they are also interested in
discovering other archaeological treasures. Little by
little, these self-taught palaeontologists are unearthing
interesting – and valuable – findings. Today, they
drive the scientists’ team to a dark pond in the middle
of a desert valley, some 20 kilometres away from the
base. From the bottom of this pond, they extricate
an impressive and well-preserved woolly rhino skull,
which they have been keeping in the water for better
preservation since the beginning of the summer season.
Some 30 kilometres away, another team, led
by Semyon Grigoriev, chief of the expedition and
head of the Mammoth Museum in Yakutsk, have
made some more discoveries. Theodor Obadia, a
renowned Moldavian palaeontologist, is measuring
a well-preserved bone, while Semyon extracts an
ancient horse skull, buried in the sand. The greatest
discovery of the day is a young mammoth’s skeleton.
Had it been but a few hours later, it would have been
completely submerged by the tide. The team have
made good inroads today.