The vicuña bears the finest natural fibre in the world, and a metre of fabric can cost $1,500 dollars today in Peru. Even the tiniest waste end of vicuna cloth coming off the weaving loom is saved to be recycled, so precious is it. The cloth itself is so soft it feels like clouds; there is nothing else in the world to compare with it. Both the raw fibre and the finished articles are locked away for safe keeping in the factory.

The vicuña was hunted to near extinction for its fibre, even after it became an officially “endangered” species in the early 20th century. For most of the 20th century it was illegal to trade in vicuña goods in Peru. Benevides devoted his life to saving the vicuña. Slowly but surely the numbers grew, so that it now has “protected” status. Groups of villages in Peru are now licensed and supervised by the government to round up herds of vicuñas, shear them and release them back into the wild—this round-up is called a “chaccu”.

The wild vicuña was domesticated about 7,000 years ago high in the Andes of Peru, and in time became the alpaca we know today. We know from archaeological finds that, before the Spanish conquest of South America, the alpaca had been selectively bred to produce very fine fleece—approaching the quality of the vicuña, and was farmed right down to the Pacific coast. However, the Spanish did not appreciate the alpaca, and the alpacas and llamas that survived were driven high up into the Andes, being supplanted at lower altitudes by the sheep and cattle the Spanish brought with them. Alpaca breeders died (of sickness, and being worked to death in the Silver mines) along with their alpacas, and millennia of breeding expertise died with them.

Many people in Peru still rely on the alpaca for all their clothing—spinning the fibre on a drop spindle. The women hand weave amazingly intricate patterns, memorised for generations. In recent years alpacas have been imported into the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the UK. China and Russia are also beginning to take interest. At first alpacas imported into the UK. came from Chile, but more recently the superior Peruvian stock has been imported here.

In the twentieth century, Peruvians again began selectively breeding alpacas for their fibre industry, and now the rest of the world is contributing to improving the quality of the alpaca. Bozedown Alpacas is in the forefront of this development; with its herd improvement programme well established for 15 years—always with the alpaca’s wild ancestor, the vicuña, in sight as our aiming point.

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