What If Gone

Species → Vicuña

Vicuña

Vicugna vicugna

500,000 individuals (2018 estimate)
Extinction risk Least Concern
ConservationDesert environment
Vicuña (Vicugna vicugna)
Photo: Diego Delso, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

What if it disappeared?

Impact Moderate
Over 53 years

Hunted for its fiber since the Spanish conquest, the vicuña fell to roughly 5,000 to 6,000 individuals across the entire Andes by the mid-1960s — before rebounding to more than half a million thanks to a shift from strict protection to a regulated, community-remunerated use.

Documented
Detail

UICN, Liste rouge — Vicugna vicugna, évaluation 2018.

The Vicuña Convention (1969) and its listing under CITES Appendix I initially relied on strict protection. The gradual shift to Appendix II — permitting trade in fiber shorn from live, released animals — created a direct economic incentive for Andean communities to protect the species rather than poach it.

Each year, Peru

Reviving the Inca chaccu tradition, a gathering of 20 to 30 people shears about 150 vicuñas per community each year — but a kilogram of raw fiber sells for roughly $390 to $500, while a single bag of processed fiber resells for more than $15,000 on the international luxury market.

Documented
Detail

Mongabay (septembre 2018). How a national reserve stopped the extinction of the Peruvian vicuña.

The Pampa Galeras reserve, the birthplace of this model, today hosts more than 5,000 vicuñas, with 10,000 more in its buffer zone, out of the 200,000 found across Peru. The gap between the price paid to shearing communities and the final resale price illustrates how much of the vicuña's economic value still escapes the very populations providing its conservation on the ground.

By modeling

An international legal market for vicuña fiber can produce either the best outcome for the species and local communities, or the worst — because it also creates an outlet for poached fiber, with the risk of numbers falling back to critical levels if oversight weakens.

Extrapolated
Detail

McAllister, R.R.J., McNeill, D. et Gordon, I.J. (2009). Legalizing markets and the consequences for poaching of wildlife species: the vicuña as a case study. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(1), 120–130.

The authors model population dynamics under different legal-market scenarios, applied to the Argentine region of Cieneguillas. Their conclusion is not a blanket verdict on legal trade in general, but a caution: success depends entirely on the quality of oversight over the legalized market, without which it also serves as cover for poached fiber.

What's missing to confirm it: Field data confirming, region by region, whether the poaching increase flagged by the IUCN mainly reflects insufficient oversight of the legal market rather than a phenomenon independent of it.

Documentation

Last verified: August 14, 2026