March 13, 2024 • 15 mins
On today’s Big Take podcast, we trace the origin of Loro Piana’s $9,000 vicuña sweaters to the Andes mountains. Bloomberg’s Marcelo Rochabrun joins host Sarah Holder to unspool what it all means for the Indigenous communities that harvest the wool.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. So there's this video
I want to tell you about. It's from a high
end Italian garment company called Loro Piano, and it's set
to this ethereal music and it shows the softly lit,
dramatic footage of the Andes Mountains. The goal is to
(00:27):
give an impression of how the company sources and processes
its most valuable material, the wool of a wild lama
like creature called the vicunya. You see them running free
in the video. You hear the faint sound of hoofs
beating against dry mountain soil, and you see shots of
indigenous communities who have lived with the vicuna since the
(00:50):
days of the Incas the company, Loro Piano doesn't say
anything in the video. In fact, there's no dialogue at all,
and as my colleague Marcelo rosche Brun, Bloomberg's Lima bureau chief,
told me, that's part of the company's appeal.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What Lorda Piano is known for is that they make
what is now known as quiet luxury. That is, garments
that are really expensive, really looks serious, but they don't
necessarily look that shiny, or they don't necessarily look that
different than any other garment you might have. It's sort
of a very subtle if you know, you know, this
(01:27):
is very expensive.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The brand is known for these kinds of understated, high
quality items. A pair of their cashmere sweatpants will run
you about three grand. Kendall roy Or a logo list
loro piano baseball cap on the TV show Succession, and
the sweaters they make from the wool of the galloping
Vikunyas in the video have price tags upwards of nine
thousand dollars. But intertwined with its quiet luxury are the
(01:51):
fates of some of the poorest communities in Peru.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Viquinyas live very high. They can live at twelve thousand feet.
Indigenous communities that live in the end is at twelve
thousand feet and to be very poor. There has to
be a big contrast here between the wealth of the
people who live near Vicunas and the people who get
to wear Vicuna garnments. What happens if I actually follow
this connection? What would I find today?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
On the show? An Italian fashion company, a once endangered
South American species, a remote Andean community, and a plan
that was supposed to help them all prosper and why
thirty years later it hasn't exactly worked out that way.
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News. Getting close enough to catch and share of
(02:42):
acunya is not easy.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
They are way faster than a human.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's a process indigenous communities have been refining since the
days of the Incan Empire.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So indigenous communities will usually share vicunyas once a year,
and so they called this a chaku, which is a
ketcher where that has been in use for centuries.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Marcelo made the ten hour trip from Lima to Lucanas,
a town in the southern Andanties, to see a chaku
up close.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
We actually walked all these miles in this part of Peru,
which is called Pampa Galleas, which is a national reserve
dedicated to the Vicunyans, and it is at about twelve
thousand feet and it is really intense work to be
able to walk miles and miles closing in on Vicunyans
at this altitude. I don't know how easy it is
(03:37):
to picture this, but it's a huge triangle with miles
in length, and you carry a rope or a fence
and you start closing in on the animals. You are
surrounding their territory from far away, a distance enough that
vicunyas will initially not realize that they are being encircled.
But that is what is happening here, just making the
(03:58):
circle or this triangle smaller and smaller as you go.
So what you see is that as humans are walking
in in one direction, the viquinas were just running in
the other there and what's on the other side is
a cage, so they will just walk into there and
be trapped.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And once they get to the cage, workers are waiting
for them. I asked Marcelo whether he had touched a vacunya.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I have touched a vikunya. I don't think the viqunya
enjoyed it. But they are so soft, they're so fluffy.
It feels like you're touching a cloud, like and I
know that nobody knows what. Yeah, you cannot touch a cloud,
but it's just in my head. It's like the idea
of what it would feel if you could touch a cloud.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It takes a small group of people to share a vacunya.
One to grab the head and one to grab the legs.
They take the vicunyas, lay them on their sides and
hold them down as someone else shears layers of their
golden brown bowl. Then the workers flip the vicunya back
up onto its feet and it goes running off back
(05:00):
into the wild, stunned and stressed, but otherwise unharmed. At
the Chaku Marcelo attended. The man overseeing the shearing was
Abraham Waman. He's been working with the Kunyas in the
community of Lucanas for almost twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Well, for me, it's like a treasure because sometimes an
animal with wool runs the risk of poachers in other
place is for example, there are poachers who kill the
vicunyas and take their wool. They take the skin and
the wool. But an animal that is already cheered, that
doesn't have any wool left is basically a safe animal.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
In other words, a vicunya sheared is a vicuna saved.
At one point, the animals were so heavily poached that
the species was on the brink of extinction, and a
bunch of Andian countries signed a treaty to protect.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Them that said two key things. When was it banned
any trade of vicunya wool for the foreseeable future until
the species could recover somewhat, and then the other one
was that it declared explicitly that vicunas would be used
economically for the benefit of the people of the Andes
in the future when the species.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Had recovered and it worked. By the eighties, the population
had rebounded and people started arguing that it was time
to make the trade of a cunyu woll legal again.
One of those voices was the maker of the nine
thousand dollars sweater.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And that's when Lorda Piana comes in, or at least
when Loda Piano comes in in the modern history of
the of the Vicunya, and they start to lobby the government,
the proving government, trying to find a way to get
legal access to the vicuna.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Eventually, the government agreed they brought back the sale of
a cuniu woll, with some conditions.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So only communities legally recognized by the government who shared
territory with vicunyas are able to capture and chear them.
So a company like Loda Piana has to go through
an indigenous community. The indigenous community will share the wold
for free, and then Lorda Piana will buy that wol
from the indigenous community, giving it significant cash for the
(07:10):
economic progress of the place.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
The government ended up awarding one group of garment manufactures
legal access to Vacunya woll.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Lorda Piana wins this as part of a conglomerate that
includes two other companies, but Lordapiana is that is the
main one, and then Lorda Piana becomes the preeminent player
in the new legal vicuna market. And in fact, the
very first place where vicunas were shared legally once again
in nineteen ninety four was in Lucanas, the community that
we visited.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
That first newly legalized vacunya sharing was a big deal,
such a big deal that the President of Peru even attended.
It marked the start of a promising new chapter in
the history of Acunya Woll and the Andes. Under the
new treaty, the Viacunya population was flourishing, the woll was
creating a new source of income in Peru's poorest region,
(07:58):
and Laura Piana had a monopoly the world's most premium fiber.
After the break, how it all fell apart leading up
to the nineteen seventies, Vicunas were on the brink of extinction,
but a treaty signed by many of the Andean nations
(08:18):
to pause the trade of their wool helped the population
roar back to life. The trade in vacunya wol resumed
in nineteen ninety four under provisions that the industry would
be structured to benefit indigenous communities, but in two thousand,
the Peruvian government made a change that would let private
companies cut indigenous communities out of the vicuna wool market.
(08:38):
The change made it possible for any landowner to shear
the wool of a vicunya that set foot on their property.
That meant companies could buy cheap land in the Antes
and shear vicunas without having to pay indigenous communities.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
This change was made in the year two thousand by
a man called Alfonso Martinez.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Alfonso Martinez was the head of the government office that
was created to regulate the new vicunya wall market, and
records show that behind the scenes he lobbied hard for this.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Change, and Alfonso Martinez goes on a few years later
to become the CEO of Loda Piana in Peru.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
After the change in regulation and with Alfonso Martinez. Leading
up their Peruvian operations, Loro Piana bought about five thousand
acres of land in the Andes near Lucanas.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
What that land enables you to do is you can
put some vicunas in there and then you can fence
the area, and this is allowed by Peruvian law, but
it is a system that ensures that those vicunas cannot
leave your land and that they cannot be shared by
anybody else. And so Loda Piana has records show about
(09:48):
two thousand vicunas in this part of Peru that it
cheers every year. The records are public because they have
to be filed with the Wildlife Regulator, and so Loda
Piana is able to get this vicuna fiber without having
to pay for it, either to any indigenous community or
to anybody else.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Does that fly in the face of the intent of
the original treaty, which was supposed to allow indigenous communities
to economically benefit from the vicunas.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, it definitely creates a competitor for the vicunya market.
Indigenous communities used to have this source of revenue in
the vicunya, but now it turns out that companies can
go and get their own in a way like the
property of the vicunya is officially still in the hands
of the state. You cannot have you cannot own vicunas.
(10:40):
But what you have our rights to use the fur,
the fiber that those animals have. And so now you
have companies being able to share that fiber because they
are they have privately owned land and they have vicunas
in there.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Lro Piana's permit to start sharing vacunyas on its own
land was approved in twenty and since then it's been
buying less vacunia wool from Lucanas and paying lower prices
for what it does buy. All of this has meant
less money for the community. Records show that in twenty fifteen,
Loro Piana paid the community nearly four hundred thousand dollars
(11:16):
for vacuna wool. Seven years later, the company bought only
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth. Meanwhile, the prices
Loro Piana charges for its vacuna garments, like the nine
thousand dollars sweaters and thirty three thousand dollars coats, have
only continued to climb. Marcelo asks Abraham Woman, the man
leading the sharing in Lucanas about how that gap feels.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Comotesas and tipto, proper conditions sink and fifteen.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
It's a deception something we feel in this community and
other communities. They buy it at a low price but
sell it at a higher price after transforming it into
vacunyabole garments.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Marcelo reached out to Lro Piana and they said, quote,
since it arrived in Peru in the eighties, Laura Piana
has been committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical
and responsible business practices. Laura Piana represents a key economic
support locally protecting and fortifying the demand and the value
of the vacuna fiber regardless of market dynamics. So is
(12:19):
there another path here? Could the local community make money
from the vacuna wool without working with existing brands. Why
can't indigenous communities just process the wole they're sharing on
their own and sell their own luxury garments.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, that is one of the keys to the issue, right,
And there are two problems here. One of them is
just lack of access to resources. Spinning vicuna fiber is
not easy just because it is so fine. Indigenous communities
are very good at weaving alpaca. They can weave lama,
but in the case of the vicuna, it is both
(12:53):
very fine and very short. The fibers themselves are not
that long, so you need very expensive machinery that is
not common available because vicunia is so rare. And then
the second challenge is that even if an indigenous community
could have access to this machinery could make garments, it
is hard to sell elite products that are worth thousands
(13:15):
of dollars unless you have the right marketing, the right connection,
the right reputation. I think the story about the vicuna
is emblematic of a lot of struggles in countries like
Peru and other countries in the Global South about having
raw materials, being the producer of important and expensive raw materials,
(13:37):
but then not being able to capture the value of
what those materials are worth when they are converted into
something else.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
So has this treaty, the Vicunya Convention worked.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
The treaty is still in place. The Vicuna population has
grown very significantly in recent years. Prue's last Vicunya census
was in twenty twelve and it had two hundred thousand Vicunas.
So compare that to what it had in the nineteen
fifties and sixties, when the entire world population of Yukunyas
was ten thousand. It has increased massively, so it is
(14:12):
a successful case of the preservation of his species on
the brink of extinction. But on the other hand, as
it led to the progress of the people of the Andes,
you cannot say that it has done very much. The
Andes remained the poorest region in the entire country and
people are still working mostly as subsistence farmers.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
by Caitlin Kenny and Daniel Ferrara, with additional support from
Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by Ben O'Brien. It was
fact checked by Stacy Renee. Our senior producers are Naomi
Shavin and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemsterbor is our executive producer.
(14:56):
Sage Bauman is our head of Podcasts Special Thing. Thanks
to Julianne Wilkinson and Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Thanks for listening.
Please follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen
to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show. We'll
be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. So there's this video
I want to tell you about. It's from a high
end Italian garment company called Loro Piano, and it's set
to this ethereal music and it shows the softly lit,
dramatic footage of the Andes Mountains. The goal is to
(00:27):
give an impression of how the company sources and processes
its most valuable material, the wool of a wild lama
like creature called the vicunya. You see them running free
in the video. You hear the faint sound of hoofs
beating against dry mountain soil, and you see shots of
indigenous communities who have lived with the vicuna since the
(00:50):
days of the Incas the company, Loro Piano doesn't say
anything in the video. In fact, there's no dialogue at all,
and as my colleague Marcelo rosche Brun, Bloomberg's Lima bureau chief,
told me, that's part of the company's appeal.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
What Lorda Piano is known for is that they make
what is now known as quiet luxury. That is, garments
that are really expensive, really looks serious, but they don't
necessarily look that shiny, or they don't necessarily look that
different than any other garment you might have. It's sort
of a very subtle if you know, you know, this
(01:27):
is very expensive.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
The brand is known for these kinds of understated, high
quality items. A pair of their cashmere sweatpants will run
you about three grand. Kendall roy Or a logo list
loro piano baseball cap on the TV show Succession, and
the sweaters they make from the wool of the galloping
Vikunyas in the video have price tags upwards of nine
thousand dollars. But intertwined with its quiet luxury are the
(01:51):
fates of some of the poorest communities in Peru.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Viquinyas live very high. They can live at twelve thousand feet.
Indigenous communities that live in the end is at twelve
thousand feet and to be very poor. There has to
be a big contrast here between the wealth of the
people who live near Vicunas and the people who get
to wear Vicuna garnments. What happens if I actually follow
this connection? What would I find today?
Speaker 1 (02:16):
On the show? An Italian fashion company, a once endangered
South American species, a remote Andean community, and a plan
that was supposed to help them all prosper and why
thirty years later it hasn't exactly worked out that way.
I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Bloomberg News. Getting close enough to catch and share of
(02:42):
acunya is not easy.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
They are way faster than a human.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
It's a process indigenous communities have been refining since the
days of the Incan Empire.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So indigenous communities will usually share vicunyas once a year,
and so they called this a chaku, which is a
ketcher where that has been in use for centuries.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Marcelo made the ten hour trip from Lima to Lucanas,
a town in the southern Andanties, to see a chaku
up close.
Speaker 2 (03:13):
We actually walked all these miles in this part of Peru,
which is called Pampa Galleas, which is a national reserve
dedicated to the Vicunyans, and it is at about twelve
thousand feet and it is really intense work to be
able to walk miles and miles closing in on Vicunyans
at this altitude. I don't know how easy it is
(03:37):
to picture this, but it's a huge triangle with miles
in length, and you carry a rope or a fence
and you start closing in on the animals. You are
surrounding their territory from far away, a distance enough that
vicunyas will initially not realize that they are being encircled.
But that is what is happening here, just making the
(03:58):
circle or this triangle smaller and smaller as you go.
So what you see is that as humans are walking
in in one direction, the viquinas were just running in
the other there and what's on the other side is
a cage, so they will just walk into there and
be trapped.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
And once they get to the cage, workers are waiting
for them. I asked Marcelo whether he had touched a vacunya.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
I have touched a vikunya. I don't think the viqunya
enjoyed it. But they are so soft, they're so fluffy.
It feels like you're touching a cloud, like and I
know that nobody knows what. Yeah, you cannot touch a cloud,
but it's just in my head. It's like the idea
of what it would feel if you could touch a cloud.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
It takes a small group of people to share a vacunya.
One to grab the head and one to grab the legs.
They take the vicunyas, lay them on their sides and
hold them down as someone else shears layers of their
golden brown bowl. Then the workers flip the vicunya back
up onto its feet and it goes running off back
(05:00):
into the wild, stunned and stressed, but otherwise unharmed. At
the Chaku Marcelo attended. The man overseeing the shearing was
Abraham Waman. He's been working with the Kunyas in the
community of Lucanas for almost twenty five years.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
Well, for me, it's like a treasure because sometimes an
animal with wool runs the risk of poachers in other
place is for example, there are poachers who kill the
vicunyas and take their wool. They take the skin and
the wool. But an animal that is already cheered, that
doesn't have any wool left is basically a safe animal.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
In other words, a vicunya sheared is a vicuna saved.
At one point, the animals were so heavily poached that
the species was on the brink of extinction, and a
bunch of Andian countries signed a treaty to protect.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Them that said two key things. When was it banned
any trade of vicunya wool for the foreseeable future until
the species could recover somewhat, and then the other one
was that it declared explicitly that vicunas would be used
economically for the benefit of the people of the Andes
in the future when the species.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
Had recovered and it worked. By the eighties, the population
had rebounded and people started arguing that it was time
to make the trade of a cunyu woll legal again.
One of those voices was the maker of the nine
thousand dollars sweater.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
And that's when Lorda Piana comes in, or at least
when Loda Piano comes in in the modern history of
the of the Vicunya, and they start to lobby the government,
the proving government, trying to find a way to get
legal access to the vicuna.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Eventually, the government agreed they brought back the sale of
a cuniu woll, with some conditions.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
So only communities legally recognized by the government who shared
territory with vicunyas are able to capture and chear them.
So a company like Loda Piana has to go through
an indigenous community. The indigenous community will share the wold
for free, and then Lorda Piana will buy that wol
from the indigenous community, giving it significant cash for the
(07:10):
economic progress of the place.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
The government ended up awarding one group of garment manufactures
legal access to Vacunya woll.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Lorda Piana wins this as part of a conglomerate that
includes two other companies, but Lordapiana is that is the
main one, and then Lorda Piana becomes the preeminent player
in the new legal vicuna market. And in fact, the
very first place where vicunas were shared legally once again
in nineteen ninety four was in Lucanas, the community that
we visited.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
That first newly legalized vacunya sharing was a big deal,
such a big deal that the President of Peru even attended.
It marked the start of a promising new chapter in
the history of Acunya Woll and the Andes. Under the
new treaty, the Viacunya population was flourishing, the woll was
creating a new source of income in Peru's poorest region,
(07:58):
and Laura Piana had a monopoly the world's most premium fiber.
After the break, how it all fell apart leading up
to the nineteen seventies, Vicunas were on the brink of extinction,
but a treaty signed by many of the Andean nations
(08:18):
to pause the trade of their wool helped the population
roar back to life. The trade in vacunya wol resumed
in nineteen ninety four under provisions that the industry would
be structured to benefit indigenous communities, but in two thousand,
the Peruvian government made a change that would let private
companies cut indigenous communities out of the vicuna wool market.
(08:38):
The change made it possible for any landowner to shear
the wool of a vicunya that set foot on their property.
That meant companies could buy cheap land in the Antes
and shear vicunas without having to pay indigenous communities.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
This change was made in the year two thousand by
a man called Alfonso Martinez.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Alfonso Martinez was the head of the government office that
was created to regulate the new vicunya wall market, and
records show that behind the scenes he lobbied hard for this.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Change, and Alfonso Martinez goes on a few years later
to become the CEO of Loda Piana in Peru.
Speaker 1 (09:17):
After the change in regulation and with Alfonso Martinez. Leading
up their Peruvian operations, Loro Piana bought about five thousand
acres of land in the Andes near Lucanas.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
What that land enables you to do is you can
put some vicunas in there and then you can fence
the area, and this is allowed by Peruvian law, but
it is a system that ensures that those vicunas cannot
leave your land and that they cannot be shared by
anybody else. And so Loda Piana has records show about
(09:48):
two thousand vicunas in this part of Peru that it
cheers every year. The records are public because they have
to be filed with the Wildlife Regulator, and so Loda
Piana is able to get this vicuna fiber without having
to pay for it, either to any indigenous community or
to anybody else.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
Does that fly in the face of the intent of
the original treaty, which was supposed to allow indigenous communities
to economically benefit from the vicunas.
Speaker 2 (10:18):
Yeah, it definitely creates a competitor for the vicunya market.
Indigenous communities used to have this source of revenue in
the vicunya, but now it turns out that companies can
go and get their own in a way like the
property of the vicunya is officially still in the hands
of the state. You cannot have you cannot own vicunas.
(10:40):
But what you have our rights to use the fur,
the fiber that those animals have. And so now you
have companies being able to share that fiber because they
are they have privately owned land and they have vicunas
in there.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Lro Piana's permit to start sharing vacunyas on its own
land was approved in twenty and since then it's been
buying less vacunia wool from Lucanas and paying lower prices
for what it does buy. All of this has meant
less money for the community. Records show that in twenty fifteen,
Loro Piana paid the community nearly four hundred thousand dollars
(11:16):
for vacuna wool. Seven years later, the company bought only
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth. Meanwhile, the prices
Loro Piana charges for its vacuna garments, like the nine
thousand dollars sweaters and thirty three thousand dollars coats, have
only continued to climb. Marcelo asks Abraham Woman, the man
leading the sharing in Lucanas about how that gap feels.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
Comotesas and tipto, proper conditions sink and fifteen.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
It's a deception something we feel in this community and
other communities. They buy it at a low price but
sell it at a higher price after transforming it into
vacunyabole garments.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Marcelo reached out to Lro Piana and they said, quote,
since it arrived in Peru in the eighties, Laura Piana
has been committed to upholding the highest standards of ethical
and responsible business practices. Laura Piana represents a key economic
support locally protecting and fortifying the demand and the value
of the vacuna fiber regardless of market dynamics. So is
(12:19):
there another path here? Could the local community make money
from the vacuna wool without working with existing brands. Why
can't indigenous communities just process the wole they're sharing on
their own and sell their own luxury garments.
Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, that is one of the keys to the issue, right,
And there are two problems here. One of them is
just lack of access to resources. Spinning vicuna fiber is
not easy just because it is so fine. Indigenous communities
are very good at weaving alpaca. They can weave lama,
but in the case of the vicuna, it is both
(12:53):
very fine and very short. The fibers themselves are not
that long, so you need very expensive machinery that is
not common available because vicunia is so rare. And then
the second challenge is that even if an indigenous community
could have access to this machinery could make garments, it
is hard to sell elite products that are worth thousands
(13:15):
of dollars unless you have the right marketing, the right connection,
the right reputation. I think the story about the vicuna
is emblematic of a lot of struggles in countries like
Peru and other countries in the Global South about having
raw materials, being the producer of important and expensive raw materials,
(13:37):
but then not being able to capture the value of
what those materials are worth when they are converted into
something else.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
So has this treaty, the Vicunya Convention worked.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
The treaty is still in place. The Vicuna population has
grown very significantly in recent years. Prue's last Vicunya census
was in twenty twelve and it had two hundred thousand Vicunas.
So compare that to what it had in the nineteen
fifties and sixties, when the entire world population of Yukunyas
was ten thousand. It has increased massively, so it is
(14:12):
a successful case of the preservation of his species on
the brink of extinction. But on the other hand, as
it led to the progress of the people of the Andes,
you cannot say that it has done very much. The
Andes remained the poorest region in the entire country and
people are still working mostly as subsistence farmers.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
This episode was produced by David Fox. It was edited
by Caitlin Kenny and Daniel Ferrara, with additional support from
Aaron Edwards. It was mixed by Ben O'Brien. It was
fact checked by Stacy Renee. Our senior producers are Naomi
Shavin and Elizabeth Ponso. Nicole Beemsterbor is our executive producer.
(14:56):
Sage Bauman is our head of Podcasts Special Thing. Thanks
to Julianne Wilkinson and Bianca Rosario Ramirez. Thanks for listening.
Please follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen
to podcasts. It helps new listeners find the show. We'll
be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!