Where did the ivory trade go after China banned elephant tusks? North, into the Russian permafrost — where an estimated 10M frozen mammoths lie waiting, and a kilogram of tusk fetches up to $1,900.

After China banned elephant ivory in twenty seventeen, the global tusk trade didn't disappear — it migrated north. Per Meduza's reporting, Yakutia's tusk hunters now dig frozen mammoth tusks from the permafrost and sell them as 'ethical ivory' — legally traded because no living animals need to die for them. Top-grade ivory brings up to nineteen hundred dollars a kilogram and often ends up in Chinese carving workshops that once worked elephant ivory. But Indigenous peoples of Yakutia hold cultural taboos against disturbing the remains, and the scramble to extract tusks before they degrade may carry costs science has yet to fully measure.

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