“But it’s been extinct for like 100 years!” exclaimed my nine-year-old stepson when I told him the woolly mammoth might be declared an endangered species. Out of the mouths of babes do we learn.

We need to work on his grasp of historical time, and probably the scale of big numbers in general. Mainland mammoths died out 10,000 years ago; the last island remnants died out 4,000 years ago. But he’s right. It is absurd to treat an extinct species as if it were endangered.

Tell that to the 18^th Conference of the Parties (CoP18) to the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), however. This august international body is currently assembled in the marbled halls of the seventh most expensive city in the world, Geneva, Switzerland, after it proved too arduous for the grand worthies to travel to Colombo, Sri Lanka in May, as originally planned.

It is earnestly considering a proposal by Israel to add the woolly mammoth to Appendix II, which lists “species that are not necessarily now threatened with extinction, but,” the exalted poobahs at CITES allege, “may become so unless trade is closely controlled”.

It also lists “lookalike species”, whose specimens in trade look like those of species listed for conservation reasons, according to Article II, section 2(b) of the CITES convention. This is the clause under which Israel is trying to prohibit international trade in mammoth ivory.

With elephant ivory having been banned from international trade since 1990, ivory derived from mammoth skeletons buried in Siberia is a booming business. There are an estimated 10 million mammoth skeletons still to be found, meaning that the world’s ivory demand could be met many times over by mammoth ivory alone.

Israel’s primary concern is that elephant and mammoth ivory are not easily distinguishable, and mislabelling illegal elephant ivory as legal mammoth ivory is a means to launder poached ivory. It has scant evidence for these claims, however.

Elephant and mammoth ivory are, to the slightly trained eye, easily distinguishable. The primary way to distinguish them is to examine the characteristic cross-hatching pattern of so-called Schreger lines. In elephant ivory, these lines form oblique angles. In mammoth ivory, they form acute angles.

Schreger lines are also unique to elephant and mammoth ivory, and serve to distinguish the two from all other ivory sources such as hippos and sperm whales (which are protected by listings on Appendix I or II), or warthogs, narwhals, orcas, and walruses (which are not).

The Israeli proposal acknowledges the use of Schreger lines to distinguish the two types of ivory, but worries about “worked mammoth ivory, especially small pieces”. Why that argument is valid for mammoths, but not for warthogs or walruses, is beyond me.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and Traffic, which monitors wildlife trade, aren’t entirely sold on Israel’s argument. Notably, they point out that Israel’s proposal cites only two anecdotal cases of attempts to pass elephant ivory off as mammoth ivory. This hardly makes a case for laundering on a grand scale.

The mammoth ivory trade is growing in leaps and bounds, but IUCN/Traffic note that elephant poaching has in fact trended downwards in the last decade. There is a good reason to believe this downward trend has nothing to do with the ivory ban, and everything to do with the increase in the supply of mammoth ivory.

Let me quote the conclusion of Can Ice Ivory Save Blood Ivory?, a 2015 paper by Naima Farah, a PhD candidate, and John R Boyce, professor of economics at Calgary University:

“This paper studies the effect that the development of Russian exports of mammoth ivory has had upon the poaching of African elephants. Our theory shows that the presence of a substitute lowers the rate of poaching relative to what it would be absent the substitute. This lowers the minimum viable population of elephants, which makes it possible that the lower harvest rate allows the population to recover sufficiently to eventually be sustainable. Our empirical analysis shows that the theoretical conclusion that the harvest rate of elephants is reduced by the presence of a mammoth ivory substitute holds. We show that the current [2010-2012] production levels of over 80 tonnes mammoth ivory per year may save approximately 50,000 African elephants from being killed. Since current poaching rates are about 34,000 elephants per year, prohibiting mammoth ivory trade could cause the poaching rate to more than double. We also find that mammoth ivory has reduced elephant ivory prices by between $80 to $120 per kilogram. Our results suggests that policies which make the substitutes readily available for renewable resource (sic) will lower demand for that resource, and may mitigate against over-exploitation of the species. In particular, this research suggests that efforts to promote mammoth ivory consumption reduce the demand for elephant ivory, and might help to prevent elephant extinction.”

No disrespect to Farah, and thanks to her for digging up the empirical evidence, but this is pretty basic economics. If you increase the supply of a legal alternative, the demand for an illegal product ought to go down. The latest poaching numbers from the WWF say it’s down to 20,000 elephants per year by now.

Israel’s CITES proposal acknowledges that this is one side of a “dichotomy of thought”, but it doesn’t bother to resolve that dichotomy, even though one side is clearly right and supported by real-world observations, while the other side is logically nonsensical. It wants to regulate mammoth ivory trade in any case, just, well, because it says CITES should have data on it.

Bans on animal products such as ivory have not been effective. They have handed control of trade over to criminal syndicates. They have overseen a vast increase in the value of the poached product, since the legal product has been hard or impossible to obtain. These rising prices have made it easy to incentivise poachers and corrupt officials in the poor countries in which the supposedly protected animals primarily occur. In addition, bans such as that on ivory may heighten its perceived rarity value, increasing demand for it.

If mammoth ivory trade were to be controlled, or even banned, it would raise the price and lower the availability of the product. This would translate directly into higher demand for alternative ivories, including elephant ivory. It’s a dumb-fool idea.

CITES ought to reflect on the failure of its trade bans and trade restrictions, and the success of its campaign to save Crocodilia. That success was based on encouraging legal crocodile farming. To save endangered species, CITES should facilitate international trade in their products by means of sustainable wildlife ranching and market-oriented regulation. Restrictions and prohibitions simply do not work.

Treating mammoths as if they were endangered is not only absurd in itself, but it will actively harm elephant conservation. That ought to be anathema to CITES. They should listen to my nine-year-old. DM