Entangled Extinction: Endangered Elephants and Extinct Mammoth Ivory in the Nineteenth and Twenty-First Centuries

This article uses two moments from the history of ivory to examine the shared histories of mammoths and elephants. The first came in the late nineteenth century, when mammoth ivory was proposed as a substitute for elephant ivory, in recognition of the massive toll the ivory trade was taking on African elephant populations. The second arrived in 2019 when an ultimately unsuccessful proposal to include extinct mammoths came before the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna as a means of protecting endangered elephants. These moments show how the categories of “endangered” and “extinct” share a complex, entangled history. In doing so, these moments demonstrate that animals wield a presence capable of shaping events and challenge conventional assumptions about the linear temporalities of endangerment and extinction.