MOSCOW, December 24. /TASS/. /TASS/. New regulations of cultural property’s evaluation, which will come into force on January 1, 2021, may put an end to the legal mammoth ivory business in Yakutia, experts told TASS.
On September 14, the Russian government adopted new regulations for examination of cultural property.
"Under the criteria set [in the document], mammoth tusks are cultural property of special importance. Those criteria are effective for intact tusks and even their fragments, whose export is outlawed. The criteria, which come into effect on January 1, 2021, may put an end to the legal business and ruin the legal export, thus badly affecting scientific research," head of the Mammoth Fauna Department at Yakutia’s Academy of Sciences, Albert Protopopov, told TASS.
According to the document, tusks of fossil animals, weighing 100 kilos and more, and tusks measuring 300 cm along the external curvature will be considered cultural property of special importance. Here will also belong tusks and their fragments with growth and development deviations, tusks of animals at early stages of ontogenesis, and tusks of dwarf forms of mammoths (regardless of the size and condition), as well as tusks and fragments on the basis of which alveoli features could be determined.
The expert called the new parameters "excessively vast." "This way, a significant part of mammoth tusks becomes cultural property of special importance. In my opinion, the criteria should be changed. <…> Of special importance could be the tusks with deviations in growth or those of outstanding sizes, like, for example, those 4 meters long and weighing over 100 kg. Such tusks are not found every year while hundreds others [smaller ones] are found annually," he added.
Impact on the sector
The business community shares this opinion. "Under the new regulations, tusks and their fragments, regardless of the condition, weight or size are viewed as cultural property - natural materials of special scientific importance - if their length and the alveoli diameters can be determined. These criteria are applicable to all the unearthed mammoth fossils, which completely outlaws the legal export of paleontological discoveries of the mammoth fauna," Executive Director of Yakutia’s Union of Collectors, Processors and Exporters of Mammoth Fauna Nikolai Stepanov said.
The Union was established in August 2019. It includes more than 20 members - collectors of the mammoth fauna and those who carve the ivory.
The new regulations "practically outlaw legal export and production of souvenirs from the mammoth ivory," the Union said. "Thus, the move will entail criminalization of the sector, decline in income of the Arctic regions’ residents, slashing of jobs and unemployment growth." More than 1,000 people have been employed with the sector, including those who get seasonal jobs, Stepanov added.
Authorities take
According to Yakutia’s Ministry of Industry and Geology, 80% of Russia’s tusk resources are in Yakutia. The resources there are estimated at about 500,000 tonnes, the total value is more than 1 trillion rubles ($13.7 billion). The production continues in the region’s eleven Arctic districts.
"As of 2020, Yakutia has 110 companies, which work under 695 licenses to collect mammoth tusks and remains of the mammoth fauna," Minister Andrei Sychevsky said. Over 100 tonnes worth more than 600 million rubles ($8 million) are collected annually.
According to the minister, in late November, Yakutia’s authorities asked Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to review the regulations.
"The introduced criteria fail to clearly distinguish between regular property and property of exclusive importance for science and cultural heritage, and thus mammoth tusks, thousands of which are collected a year, are referred to as especially valuable cultural property, and tusk fragments, which do not have any importance for science, are referred to as cultural property," the minister quoted the letter to the prime minister. The new regulations may push mammoth ivory production into the "shadow market," the authors write. Thus, truly cultural property may be hidden or destroyed, as gatherers would not be interested in reporting unique findings, the authorities stressed in the letter.