Peru Soon to Market a Treasure--Vicuna Wool

The government of Peru has helped nurture the furry vicuna back from near extinction in the Andes and will soon start shearing the animal and selling what experts say is the finest wool in the world.

The graceful vicuna, a fleet cousin of the more widely known llama, once numbered in the hundreds of thousands along the slopes and plateaus of the South American Andes.

But mass hunting of the vicuna for its exquisite pelt and wool decimated the population to fewer than 8,000 animals in the early 1970s.

Now, after nearly two decades of wildlife management and bans on the hunting of the endangered animal, experts say at least 130,000 vicuna roam the Andes on protected ranges in Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.

Protection Assured

A world wildlife agency gave the government of Peru permission in June to let impoverished peasants in the Andean highlands catch and shear vicuna as long as the animals are not harmed.

Under the terms of the agreement, the government must assure that the vicuna wool is woven into cloth in Peru and marked with an indelible stamp that distinguishes it from fabric made from vicuna killed by poachers.

Cloth made from vicuna, once treasured by the ancient Incans, is the finest wool available, experts say. A strand of vicuna wool is one-seventh the thickness of human hair. The vicuna wool is so fine that it must be mixed with thicker fibers to be woven into cloth. Only fiber from the silkworm is finer.

Smuggling a Problem

Smugglers who kill vicuna and slip the wool out of Peru can weave it into cloth that fetches up to $1,200 a square meter in contraband markets in Europe and Asia, said Augusto Dammert Leon, a prominent Peruvian ecologist.

In the past, poachers carried out mass slaughters of vicuna to obtain sufficient wool. An adult vicuna can be sheared only once every two years, and each shearing yields only about nine ounces of wool.

A month ago, Condortips, a textile firm in the southern city of Arequipa sent 120 square meters of fabric woven from the reddish-brown vicuna wool to the Agriculture Ministry. Marketing of the fabric is expected to begin shortly.

The value of the wool contrasts with the harshness of the vicuna’s habitat in the highlands of the South American Andes, where chill winds sweep unhindered across vast high-altitude plateaus.

Vicuna Adapted

Oxygen is thin, temperatures are cold and water can be scarce on the plains. But the vicuna, which drink water as infrequently as once every four days, have adapted well.

Vicuna have broad hoof pads that do not damage the delicate flora in the highlands, ranging from 12,400 to 17,000 feet above sea level. When startled, vicuna let off a sound resembling something between a whistle and a shout.

Barrel-chested peasants dwelling on the bleak, arid highlands known as the Altiplano also have adapted to the harsh climate. The peasants are mostly subsistence farmers earning $70 a year or less.

An extremist Maoist rebel group, Shining Path, has preyed on the poverty to draw converts to its ranks. Peasants joining the movement have turned parts of the highlands into a convulsed battlefield where more than 5,000 people have died since 1980.

Program Touted

Peruvian authorities tout the program to shear the vicuna as a way to provide peasants with greater income, alleviating the government neglect that has spawned the rebel violence.

Authorities hope the program also will encourage peasants to fight off poachers continuing to prey on the vicuna, especially in the huge Pampa Galeras national reserve in the state of Ayacucho in southern Peru. Rangers say as many as 100,000 vicuna live in the huge reserve.

“Once the people have an economic interest in the species, they will themselves quit killing (the vicuna) and also see to it that other people don’t,” said Tony Luscombe, an American naturalist based in Lima.

Enforcement Troubles

In the last 2 1/2, six unarmed park rangers, two soldiers and two policemen have been killed by poachers. A month ago, 32 park rangers traveled to Lima to lobby for weapons they said they needed to defend themselves and the vicuna.

Corruption also has plagued efforts to implement the program. Rangers arrested 16 suspected poachers and 449 pounds of vicuna wool in 1985 but the detainees were all freed within months. The vicuna wool also disappeared.

The government already is entrusted with 4,780 pounds of bulk vicuna wool that was sheared from 8,000 animals killed in 1980 when authorities decided to curb the swelling vicuna population in the Pampa Galeras reserve.

The bulk unprocessed vicuna wool stored in a warehouse in Pampa Galeras is worth $369,410, figured at a value of $77.27 per pound.

The value of the wool contrasts with the harshness of the vicuna’s habitat.