秘鲁骆马毛复兴：从濒危到可持续奢华的典范
High in the Peruvian altiplano, where thin air and brittle cold test every living thing, a small, elegant camelid roams the grasslands with fleece so fine it was once reserved for Incan emperors. The vicuña, the last wild camelid of the Andes, produces wool thinner than cashmere and softer than silk — a fibre that commands prices above $500 per kilogram. Yet by the 1960s, poaching had driven these animals to the brink of extinction; fewer than 6,000 remained across all their native range. Decades later, a remarkable alliance of indigenous communities, government agencies, and international conservation protocols has transformed the vicuña into a symbol of sustainable luxury and cultural resurgence.
The heart of this revival lies in the ancient tradition of the chaccu, a communal roundup in which villagers on foot and horseback encircle herds and guide them into stone-walled enclosures. Vicuñas are then sheared by hand — each animal yields only about 250 grams of fibre every two years — before being released unharmed. This practice, practised for centuries by pre-Columbian societies, had nearly disappeared under colonial disruption and modern market pressures. Today, however, communities in regions such as Ayacucho and Puno have revived the chaccu as both a ceremony and a livelihood. One elder in the highland community of Lucanas remarked that the event is not merely economic but a reclamation of ancestral stewardship, a way of reweaving the social fabric along with the fibre.
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