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FYI he said "conservation issues", not controversial. They're probably brittle and can't support their own weight safely.

In the natural history museum London fake ivory is used due to theft concerns (says as much on the signs), might be the same here?

Ah, thanks. It was confusing to me. Another word that I think might fit better would be, "preservation."

Perhaps that's yet another case where British English diverges a bit from American English.

I didn't find an explicit quote, but for example look: there is this institute in UK called "institute of conservation" https://icon.org.uk/groups/archaeology/about-archaeological-...