South American Camelids: their values and contributions to people

Abstract

South American Camelids (SACs) make several material and non-material contributions to people and are a key component of the Andean biocultural heritage. From the perspective of the IPBES' Conceptual Framework, SACs constitute the "nature" component in the complex system of interactions between human societies and the Andean mountain environment. There are four SAC living species today, two of which are wild, or Salqa, in the indigenous cosmovision: guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and vicuña (Vicugna vicugna). Llama (Lama glama) and alpaca (Vicugna pacos) were domesticated 5000 years ago, and are therefore Uywa, in the indigenous cosmovision. Both wild and domestic camelids were, and in several cases still are, the most highly appreciated resource for Andean livelihoods. Historically, camelids and their contributions have been used by Andean people since the peopling of the Americas over 11,000 years ago. In this paper, we present three case studies (chakus for vicuña management, llama caravans, and llama nanobodies) to bring attention to the essential role of vicuñas and llamas for Andean communities today, their intercultural linkages with the Western world, and telecoupling interactions.

Keywords: Andean altiplano; Lama glama; NCP; Nature contribution to people; Values; Vicugna vicugna.

Fig. 1

Brief description of the 4 species of camelids. Vicuñas were introduced in Ecuador in 1989, 1993, and 1999 and actually, the population is approximately 7000 individuals. Ecuador also reintroduced alpacas (current population 6700) and llamas (current population 10,000). Chile and Ecuador, FAO 2005. Gonzalez & Acebes . Acebes et al. . Census of Agriculture, Perú (2012). Ministry of Production Bolivia (2005). National Agronomic Census Argentina (2008). Vilá

Fig. 2

Images from vicuñas case study (chaku) visualizing some real images of components. The quality of life is “Pachamama with vicuñas” an original drawing of Carlos Julio Lopez owned by VICAM. The photographs of vicuñas in “nature” is Yanina Arzamendia´s authorship. Bibiana Vilá is the author of the rest of the photographs

Fig. 3

Images from the llama’s case study visualizing different images of the CF components. All the photographs were taken by Bibiana Vilá except the lighting (natural drivers) obtained from the internet. The imagen of Madeleine (Good quality of life) has the girl and her mother´s permission