The Vicuña: The Ultimate Ungulate

Intro

The vicuña, the smallest of the family of camelids, can be found exclusively in South America, primarily in the central Andes. Vicuña populations can be found in Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, with a small population in Ecuador.

With a soft, silky cinnamon coloured coat that can be spun eight times finer than human hair, the wool from the vicuña, ancestor of the domesticated alpaca, is the most expensive in the world. One kilo of vicuña wool can sell for between £450-500 on the international market.

Demise of the vicuña

Prior to European colonization, the Inca Empire considered vicuña sacred. The animal was protected under Inca law and only royalty were permitted to wear clothing woven from its luxurious fleece (nicknamed “fibre of the gods”).

By the early 16th century, populations were estimated to be around 2 million animals. After the Spanish conquest in 1532, vicuñas were persecuted as Europeans conducted large scale exportation of vicuña skin and wool.

Indiscriminate poaching and exploitation of vicuñas continued unabated until the mid 1960s, by which time populations had plummeted to between 10,000 and 15,000 animals, with Ecuador’s population becoming extinct. Vicuña populations in the remaining four countries teetered on the brink of extinction and vicuñas became one of the most endangered species in South America.

The vicuña wool trade versus the rhino horn trade

There are some minor similarities between the existing management programmes of the vicuña and the proposed trade mechanism for rhino horns. Both vicuña wool and rhino horn are products with high demand and a high re-sale value. Both products are renewable (they re-grow) and both species were/are under severe threat from poaching and extinction. There are also fundamental differences between them too.

When the trade in vicuña wool was originally conceived, vicuñas were intended to be free roaming wild animals, herded only for wool harvesting. In contrast, the proposed trade of rhino horn relies on harvesting the horns from captive or farmed rhinos on private land, the owners being the main beneficiaries of any income generated through horn sales.

Unlike the proposal of a legalised trade of rhino horn as a measure to eliminate poaching and increase animal numbers, the trade of vicuña wool was only intended as an economically viable method of supporting poorer communities and conserving the species.

Today, the demand for vicuña has risen dramatically and the original management of vicuñas has shifted to meet these international demands. Unsurprisingly, vicuña farms have been established with the sole purpose of breeding and harvesting, taking emphasis away from conservation and focussing more on sustainable use of the species.

In South America, the vicuña has both cultural and religious importance to local communities and the wool, meat and hide are all purposeful to humans.

The purported medicinal properties and emotional value of rhino horns are subjective and, unlike vicuña derivatives, rhino horn serves no practical purpose to humans.

While the trade of vicuña products raises no substantial ethical issues (other than to ensure farming practices uphold animal welfare), rhino horn does. To sell a product based on the gullibility of consumers/users is morally objectionable. The rhino horn trade will exploit false beliefs and openly endorse the use of a fallacious product which will almost certainly stimulate demand to unsustainable numbers.

Protecting vicuñas:

In response to centuries of exploitation, international, regional and national conservation efforts have been implemented. The Vicuña Convention (later to change to the Convention and Conservation Management of Vicuña), was established in 1969 with the objective of preventing further decrease of the species and promoteling population recovery.

The agreement, signed in 1969 by Peru and Bolivia, and then in 1974 by Argentina, Chile and Ecuador, assured that all five countries had an obligation to suppress hunting of vicuña and maintain protection in national reserves and private lands.

In 1973, the United States congress passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) with the purpose of recovering and protecting imperilled species and the eco-systems on which they depend. Under the act, species are classified as either endangered (in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of their range) or threatened (species is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future).

On the 3rd March 1973, at the World Wildlife Conference in Washington D.C, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) was established. In 1975, the CITES treaty entered into force, with the objective of ensuring that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival.

Vicuñas in all five member countries (Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and Ecuador), were placed on Appendix I (CITES operates three separate appendices, each one offering listed species a different level of protection; Appendix I is the highest level of protection). The CITES classification prohibited all commercial and international trade of vicuña derivatives. Each country became responsible for implementing their own management system and legislation.

Vicuña population recovery during the international trade ban

With the national and international trade ban enforced and a period of absolute protection fully implemented, vicuña populations recovered. During the strict regime of trade prohibition, vicuña populations across all five countries increased by 789% (1969-1993/94).

In 1993/94, CITES no longer considered vicuñas to be threatened with extinction and relaxed the conservation status across all range states; A majority of populations were downgraded to Appendix II, permitting controlled trade.

Conclusion

Vicuñas recovered due to strategic conservation management: trade prohibition combined with both species and habitat protection. Only when populations increased to sustainable numbers was trade once again permitted, allowing commercially harvested fibres to be sold, but still forbidding hunting.

The original trade model for harvesting and financially benefiting from vicuña derivatives was never intended as a mechanism to eliminate poaching. Even today, decades after the signing of the Vicuña Convention and with a regulated trade established, illegal markets still thrive and poaching continues.

Annually, up to 22,500 kgs of Vicuña wool are exported as a result of illegal activities and because of this some countries have banned the importation of the wool in order to save the animal.

Pro-trade proponents claim the legalised trade of vicuña wool helped curb poaching and is proof a controlled market is beneficial to both communities and species. However, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 3289 vicuñas were reported as illegally hunted in Bolivia between 2008 and 2013. In Peru, an estimated 1723 vicuñas were poached between 2009 and 2013. There are no official statistics documenting the exact numbers of vicuñas poached, so figures are reliant on officially reported cases. Under the circumstances, it would not be unreasonable to assume the actual number of fatalities due to criminal activity is substantially higher.

Pro-trade supporters continue to champion the legalised trade of vicuña wool as a successful business model to compare the proposed trade of rhino horn, but poaching continues in high numbers. Demand is now so high for vicuña wool that farms have been established for the sole purpose of supplying trade, the conditions of which do not emulate natural wild habitats.

The farming of wild animals poses many risks, including increased risk of disease and degradation of genetic diversity. What research has been done into the impact of keeping rhinos at unnaturally high population densities? Some reports indicate that the higher the population, the lower the breeding rate. In 2008, Solio Game Reserve in Kenya was forced to remove black rhinos from the population when the breeding percentage dropped to 3.8%. It would be interesting to know the percentage of births versus the population on properties known to be intensive farming operations. With higher density populations, there has to be a skewed ratio between adult bulls and cows. Supplementary feeding, the cost of protection and the possibility of disease spreading among a dense rhino population must be taken into consideration.

Growing herds of rhino to a level where the return income from horn sales versus their upkeep can take decades. At least one local study done at Rhodes University indicates that without external subsidies and financial support, this could be cost inhibitive.

Studies with captive rhinos also indicate a higher mortality rate among black rhinos and a lower reproductive rate in white rhinos. To date, no scientific studies have been conducted to establish the long term psychological or physical effects of herding naturally solitary animals, such as rhinos, in breeding farms nor have any studies been conducted to establish the long term psychological or physical effects of regular horn harvesting (rhino horn is used by the animals to dig and forage, uproot shoots, guide youngsters, displays of dominance and for protection).

Back in 2008, officially recorded poaching incidents equated to around 0.28% of the entire vicuña population. That same year, South Africa witnessed a spike in rhino poaching mortalities. Supporters of a legalised trade of rhino horn, declare the CITES ban has always been detrimental to rhino populations and failed to yield any form of success. In 2008, 83 rhinos were poached in South Africa (approximately 0.3% of the entire African population of rhinos). Isn’t it strange how poaching percentages between the two trades were so similar and yet one is hailed a success, while the other is a desperate failure?

From 2012 reports of poaching in Peru escalated. In January 2015, ecologist, veterinarian and leading expert on South American camelids, Christian Bonacic , of Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, in Santiago, who was at the forefront of developing best practice guidelines for sustainable, ethical use of vicuñas, published an article, saying that legalizing rhino horn trade, will not save the species. In his article, he explains why a legal trade in vicuña wool has led to more—not less—poaching, and why he thinks a legal trade in rhino horn could be catastrophic for the species. He said`:

“The availability and affordability of vicuña wool has ultimately not worked to protect wild populations from poaching. In fact, poaching has even increased over the past ten years in peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. The opening of the vicuña wool industry led to market expansion, which we did not anticipate. Increasing demand in turn led to more poaching, not less. Our worry now is that globalization could increase demand for vicuña wool beyond natural production limits, threatening wild vicuñas yet again.”

Talking to National Geographic in January 2015 Boniac also said:

“According to the sustainable use paradigm, if wildlife can be used, it can be saved. This means that farming of wild animals and their conservation are explicitly interlinked. The idea was that if you can provide income to local communities from sustainable use of a wild animal, this will exclude illegal poaching. And indeed, the trend in the '90s did prove this approach successful in a number of places with a number of species. In Chile, we followed this paradigm like a religion. But the world has changed, and many indigenous communities are now much more globalized. There are many more roads, many more exchange routes, including the Internet, which allows you with one click to buy something banned in one country and not in another. The romantic view that local communities can use an animal sustainably is simply no longer feasible in the 21st century”

Given the above, why would opening the market for rhino horn trade be any different?