When the Yukon government proclaimed the woolly mammoth one of the territory's animal emblems in the 1990s, it harkened back some 25,000 years, to an era when colossal prehistoric elephants roamed across a land called Beringia.
BY JEAN-PIERRE SYLVESTRE
Stroll the streets of Dawson City on the shores of the Yukon River, and you'll find an enticing array of souvenirs. Local boutiques, like the Klondike Nugget and Ivory Shop, sell jewellery, small sculptures and intricately carved scrimshaw. Remarkably, the scrimshaw is made of fossil ivory from the tusks of long-extinct woolly mammoths.
"Mammoth ivory is harder to carve than elephant ivory, but on the plus side it's tremendously plentiful," says boutique owner Greg Kehoe. "In fact, experts estimate world reserves of mammoth tusks in the Yukon, Alaska and Siberia at around 60,000 tons. So elephants can relax for a while!"
Kehoe sells between 2,000 and 3,000 kilos of mammoth ivory a year. He estimates many thousands of tons of fossil ivory move through Dawson City annually. All of which raises the question: Is this some kind of "white gold" rush?
Hitting the Jackpot
Actually, it was during the Klondike Gold Rush that the Yukon's fossil ivory was first discovered a little over a century ago. To find gold, miners and other adventurers had to dig down through the permafrost to reach the gravel beds that held gold deposits.
Permafrost, of course, is ideal for preserving the carcasses of long-vanished animals. Geologists and miners working in Siberia and Alaska have dug up everything from partial or complete mammoth carcasses to bison, horses and other Ice Age mammals.
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