Mammoth tusk is in demand from luthiers who make custom guitars and other custom instrument makers. Sure, digging up anything has environmental consequences, but the scale of the demand is too low to make an ecosystem dent. It's not like paper mills, gravel pits, or metals mines. The environmental objection to this seems to be more about the men themselves and the individual entrepreneurialism, because if this were bank funded, it would be called an important industry. If they want to talk about environmental devastation, I hope they enjoyed all those newspapers they read to refine those thoughtful opinions, because if you've been to northern Ontario, the pulp industry that produced all that paper to opine on was what really killed rivers. We may look back on newspapers as one of the worst examples of devastation wrought by human vanity in history.
I don't think this mammoth tusk demand scales to where it creates environmental problems on the scale of real industries, and the guys doing it just seem like an easy target for a concern brigade who use it as leverage for influence in regional politics.
Great article and expository photography!
