MSIS student wins first place in his division at CCI Research Symposium
From the sunny beaches of California to Norway’s northern lights and beyond, School of Information Sciences masters student Christopher Hastings is on a mission to find answers regarding mammoth ivory hunting in Siberia.
Hastings won first place at the 46th Annual College of Communication and Information Research Symposium in his division. His research presentation was titled Mammoth Ivory Hunting in Siberia: The Ethical, Environmental, Cultural, and Economic Considerations.
Hastings was born in Southern California and received his undergraduate degree in history at the University of California San Diego.
“During my time there, I was working in the school archives and I kind of decided that I really enjoyed it and wanted to pursue that more,” he stated.
Shortly after his time at UC San Diego, Hastings moved to Tennessee with his family. He is currently studying information sciences with a pathway in archives and records management.
His interest in Polar Archives began when he read Arctic Explorations by Elisha Kent Kane. After reading the book, Hastings started to research if there were any Arctic or Polar Archives within the United States—he found one at The Ohio State University. Hastings reached out to the university and was connected with Laura Kissel, who has since become a mentor.
“She invited me to come up, tour the archives, and talk to her about what happens in Polar Archives,” he said.
Hastings visited The Ohio State University Archives back in August of 2023. While speaking with Kissel, Hastings started to realize how big the field of Arctic Archives actually is.
“She was telling me about this symposium, the Polar Libraries Colloquy, where all the universities and academic institutions that have polar-focused libraries meet and talk about what’s happening in the field. It’s mostly between Europe and North America, but they flip flop every other year between a place in Europe and a place in North America. She said this upcoming year is going to be really cool. It’s in Tromso, Norway,” Hastings explained.
Kissel encouraged Hastings to submit an abstract to present at the colloquy which would allow him to apply for an award that could help pay for registration fees and travel.
Hastings said, “Initially, I had submitted an abstract that was much more science focused. It was focusing on early predictions of climate change and how those kinds of predictions have shifted over time. So, I submitted that and then I was thinking, do I really want to go to my first symposium and present a bunch of science-based research to potentially a bunch of scientists?”
Hastings said that’s when he remembered a television special that touched on mammoth ivory hunting.
“So I wrote up a whole new abstract about the mammoth ivory hunting in Siberia and then submitted that and got accepted to present on that in Tromso.”
While working towards the colloquy in Norway, SIS Assistant Professor Brian Dobreski asked Hastings if he would be interested in presenting his work at CCI’s Annual Research Symposium. Hastings jumped at the chance.
During the symposium, Hastings had ten minutes to present his findings to a panel. At the end of his presentation, the panel was able to ask questions about his research.
“Basically, tens of thousands of years ago mammoths were roaming around in the Arctic regions and Siberia particularly. When they died, it was so cold that they didn’t decompose; like if an elephant died in Africa, it would decompose pretty quickly. So, because it was so cold in those Arctic regions, they didn’t decompose as fast as they would otherwise, and then over time, they got buried under more ice and more snow. They get trapped in the permafrost which is just frozen soil. So now there are all these bones of ice age mammals just frozen in really well-preserved states in the permafrost in Siberia.”
Hastings explained that climate change and global warming have led to finding mammoth ivory frozen in the ground. He says the indigenous people of Siberia have started to mine the area, causing erosion and adding to the ivory black market issue.
“They take that ivory back out from Siberia and sell it because it’s not elephant and it’s pretty distinct from elephant ivory, People can see that this is mammoth ivory. There are no regulations against buying or selling this mammoth ivory because it’s a species that’s been extinct for tens of thousands of years. So as people find this ivory, they take it, they sell it, and they make huge profits. The average monthly income in these areas is $500 a month, and these tusks that they’re finding just eroding out of the cliffs are selling for $30,000. So they’re making huge amounts of money.”
He says there have been several local groups who have rented materials and taken out loans to go deep into the remote areas of the tundra.
“They have these big pumps where they just blast away at the permafrost melting it, hoping to find these mammoth bones and mammoth tusks to sell, but a lot of it is very environmentally damaging. It really pollutes local waterways and increases climate change because they’re melting the permafrost, but it’s also creating a severe loss of paleontological data because all of the bones that aren’t valuable, they just leave to decompose in the muck that they create with their hydraulic mining.”
Hasting says many times, these groups don’t find anything, which also leads to an economic dilemma along with the moral and ethical issues mentioned.
Hastings has been looking at attempts to document the mammoth ivory trade, but because it is mostly done on the black market in remote regions of Siberia, there isn’t much to go off of.
“The Russian government in about 2014 started issuing licenses to legalize and monitor the illegal methods of ivory trading, because a lot of the qualms that the Russian government has about it is the environmental aspects. The environmental damage and the fact that they want to tax the trade and if it’s on the black market, they can’t tax it. So they started issuing licenses and I’ve seen maybe two numbers, one from 2014 and one from 2017, about how much licensing is going on. I don’t really expect to find any more numbers about that, but I think that’s one of the main methods of monitoring,” he said.
Hastings has contacted Dutch paleontologist, Dick Mol, who has helped him find more documentation and educated him on the mammoth ivory trade.
Hastings says some of the main points of his research are to educate people on the topic and to find out more about the illegalization, or lack thereof, of mammoth ivory hunting.
He adds that the CCI Symposium was a great warm-up for his Norway presentation. His advisor, Dobreski, watched the presentation and gave feedback afterwards. Hastings will continue to work on his presentation to perfect it and write a paper on the topic which will be presented at the Polar Library Colloquy in Norway in June.
According to Hastings, he’s one of only five presenters from the United State.
“I don’t think it’s fully set in that I’m doing it, so I’m sure maybe the month leading up to it, I’ll just be extremely nervous, but, for right now it’s exciting,” he said.