An animal that has been extinct for thousands of years may soon be listed as endangered.
Israel made the proposal at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) at the start of 2019, with more woolly mammoth remains popping up around parts of an ever-warming eastern Russia.
It’s perfectly legal to sell mammoth ivory worth about $500 per pound according to the Wall Street Journal, but it may allow poachers to hunt for fossils of the elephants and work around the law by selling their ivory as mammoth ivory.
“The purpose of this listing proposal is to prevent illegal trade in living elephants by preventing ‘laundering’ or mislabeling of elephant ivory,” read the CITES proposal, that is expected to progress by 2020.
“As far as we are aware, our proposal is the first time that a proposal has been submitted to list an extinct species (as endangered). We are confident that this listing is an important way to prevent extinction of other endangered species.”
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