Booming trade in mammoth ivory may be bad news for elephants

TORONTO— In 2015, Andy Huynh was accompanying wildlife guards in Kenya’s Maasai Mara National Reserve to help ward off poachers. Fresh off a decade of service in the Middle East with U.S. Special Operations Forces, he thought there was little that could faze him. But when he saw his first poached rhinoceros, with half of its face sawed away for the horn, he turned and threw up. “I knew then and there I wanted to dedicate my life to stopping wildlife crime,” Huynh said. He began to work with various wildlife protection nonprofits, then joined a series of U.N. and Interpol undercover operations in China and Vietnam to bust up the illegal trade in elephant ivory. Now, he has extended his definition of wildlife to the distant past: the great, tusked mammoths and mastodons of the ice age. At the annual meeting of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) here last week, Huynh argued that the growing trade in ivory from the ancient carcasses now emerging as Arctic permafrost thaws is sustaining a global market that leads to the death of living elephants. He urged paleontologists to raise their voices against the fossil ivory trade—and avoid dealing with unscrupulous collectors who might be involved in it. Some researchers question whether there are enough data to prove ancient ivory really is buoying the demand for elephant tusks, but others at the meeting welcomed his call to action. “Andy did a great job of making his case,” says Thomas Hol...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news