Bolivia 1938, The vicuna, provider of the golden sweaters of Inca Royalty

So hear we have an animal that lives 10,000 feet up in the Andes. It’s golden fur is specially adopted to allow the animal to live in freezing conditions. Sounds perfect for royalty in need of sweaters and socks. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.

Many collectors, including this one, delight in a far off place showing off the exotic, which perhaps was not so exotic there. This issue does that not just with the vicuna, but llamas, toucans and even the vicuna’s natural predator, the jaguar.

Todays stamp is issue A91, a 20 Centavo stamp issued by Bolivia on January 21st, 1939. It was an eighteen stamp issue in various denominations. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth $1.25 used. There are imperforate fakes of this stamp and later overstamps to reflect devalued currency that are all too real.

The vicuna is an ancestor of the more common and domesticated alpaca. That the wool is so unique is an adoption to live in such high altitudes. The fur traps warm air close to the animals skin which allows the animal to survive when the furs outer layer freezes. It eats a variety of tall grass that breaks through the snow cap and has adopted to be able to drink water with high salt content. Indeed it likes to lick mountain rocks for their salt content. The animals travel in family herds of one male, 10-15 females, and young.

Local tradition is that the vicuna was much prized by the Inca. Only Royalty was allowed to wear the products of the fur. They believed the vicuna were the reincarnation of young maidens  that had received coats of golden fleece after having consented to the advances of the ugly old king. Every four years the vicuna were shepherded into a lockup where they could be shorn and then released to provide the Royal wool.

The story then follows that the Spanish period did not honor the vicuna in the same way and they were heavily poached for their valuable wool. By the 1960s, the wild herd was down to 6000 vicunas. The USA Peace Corps then stepped in. They trained and paid a group of local game wardens and banned internationally the trade of vicuna wool. The vicuna was declared endangered by the World Wildlife Fund. Herd numbers began to recover.

In 1993, the old traditions of the Incas regarding the vicunas were remembered, or was it invented. The rules on trading the wool were relaxed and now wild vicunas are gathered every three years, shorn and released. The proceeds are used to support the habitat areas. So far it is claimed that the trade has not again endangered the animal. They don’t explain of course how the wild animal is to survive the next winter shorn of it’s special, and slow growing fur.

Well my drink is empty. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.