These ivory miners will either get rich — or die trying.
The race is on for “white gold” — that’s ivory — harvested “ethically” from the fossils of prehistoric woolly mammoths, which are buried deep underground in Yakutia, Siberia. One carved tusk could be worth between $34,000 and $1 million.
Russian tusk miners, or “tuskers,” spend about five months in search of excavation sites. Once found, they bore 200-foot tunnels into hillsides to dig up mammoth tusks, which have been preserved in permafrost for tens of thousands of years or more.
Woolly rhino tusks are also a prized find and are ground up for sale as medicine in Vietnam. The ancient remedy is said to be worth more than its weight in gold. One tusk unearthed during a recent dig was sold for $14,000, according to Radio Free Europe, who sent a photographer to cover the miners’ conditions.
As global temperatures rise, much of the ice that once covered the frigid region has melted, making potential fossil sites even more accessible to miners, Wired reported.
As a result, many locals, whose average-take-home pay is just $500 per month, are joining the Siberian “white gold rush” in search of a better life. Unfortunately, “only around 20 to 30 percent of tuskers will find something significant enough to make a profit,” said paleontologist Valery Plotnikov.
A tusker wipes clean a tusk that was pulled from the permafrost.Amos Chapple/Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty“It’s very sad,” Plotnikov told Radio Free Europe. “A lot of these guys have taken out bank loans to pay for these expeditions.”
Besides sparing living elephants from the horrors of tusk poaching, mammoth fossils are actually protected by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. If unlicensed miners are discovered by law enforcement, miners will face a $45 penalty. Three strikes could result in more serious charges.
Miners keep expenses low by repurposing Soviet-era machinery to blast holes into the earth and camp in the wilderness for months at a time, hundreds of miles from nearby towns.
Unfortunately, Asia’s appetite for tusks, often used in traditional medicine, has encouraged miners to take the risk in hopes of making a profit in illegal markets. Those with the clearance have complained that their ivory has been stuck in customs for more than a year.
