The International Herald Tribune reports on Siberian carvers who are using extinct Woolly Mammoths tusks to create ivory figures.

As global warming melts the tundra in Siberia, remains of the Woolly Mammoth emerge from the ground.  Carvers then use the ivory tusks to create figures to sell in Asia.

Conservationists are encouraging the use of the Woolly Mammoth tusks because it cuts down on the need for poachers to kill living elephants.

From the IHT:

The trade, bolstered recently by global warming, which has melted the tundra and exposed more frozen remains, is not only legal but actually endorsed by conservationists. They note somewhat grudgingly that while the survival of elephants may be in question, it is already too late for mammoths. Mammoth ivory from Siberia, they say, meets some of the Asian demand for illegal elephant ivory and its trade should be encouraged.

While Ice Age ivory has been carved in Siberia since the 17th century, it was further helped by the international ban on the elephant ivory trade in the late 1980s. Russian exports of mammoth ivory - the only type of ivory legally imported into the United States - reached 40 tons last year, up from just 2 tons in 1989, said Aleksei Tikhonov.

Animal and Wildlife smuggling is a $20 billion market.