Mammoths are to be redefined as mineral resources and their extraction taxed accordingly under new legislation introduced in the State Duma, InvestCafe reported, citing State Duma records.
If the legislation, introduced by Fedot Tumusov, a deputy from Yakutsk, receives support, a site on a Siberian Island in Russia's far north where a mammoth was recently discovered will be defined as a deposit. A license will be required to access it, and a tax will be levied on any mammoth materials that are extracted from it.
The exact rate of the tax to be levied remains unclear.
This is not the first attempt by lawmakers in Yakutsk to regulate mammoth remains, 80 percent of which are concentrated in the region, according to Izvestia. In 2003, the republic passed a law and began to hand out licenses to prospectors granting the right to gather mammoth remains from the land's surface.
However, the prosecutors office overruled the law in 2007. Since then the mammoth remains market, which is estimated at $1 million per year, has been unregulated.
The bill has not yet made it through its first reading.