The once-endangered vicuña is thriving in the Peruvian Andes

http://www.bbc.com/travel/gallery/20180917-the-rarest-fabric-on-earth

by MiriamWeiner • 8 years ago

71 21 8 years ago

Rare to read positive news.

lanestp• 8 years ago

There is lots of positive news out there. Reforestation, garbage patch cleanup, Great Barrier Reef improvement. I’ve started prioritizing finding good news. Normal media channels will just get you depressed.

tyu100• 8 years ago

Yep, we are in a sustained global economic and technological boom that's been going on for decades. If it bleeds it leads is true of almost all news media, it's up to you to find good sources of information. The business news is actually a great source to prioritize as making accurate bets about the world is the most important thing to its readership.

beat2• 8 years ago

It's rare that positive news gets reported. It happens, but it's not exciting, generally. "Infant mortality rate in decline for 50th straight year" is great news, but it's not "news".

Instead, we get breathless headlines about shark attacks, which hardly ever happen. Our brains latch on to the wrong things most of the time. The news sucks because our brains suck. They're just giving us what we want.

idoubtit• 8 years ago

I suppose it was a random example, but it's unfortunately a very bad one if it's about the USA, like most posts here presuppose.

The infant mortality in the USA certainly did not decline on every recent year[^1]. And the bad news is that this rate is extremely high for a rich country, with a value similar to Serbia, half more than the average rate in Europe[^2]. This last "news" was even reported under the title "Our infant mortality rate is a national embarrassment"[^3].

[^1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.pdf

[^2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...

[^3]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/29/our-i...

rhcom2• 8 years ago

The NYT does a whole section called "The Week in Good News", it's a nice palette cleanser.

https://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/the-week-in-good-news

yesenadam• 8 years ago

I follow the Good News Network on facebook, it's a good source for positive news, ranging from the small but heart-warming to the hugely important.

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/

ar-jan• 8 years ago

* vicuña.

forinti• 8 years ago

English is such a plastic language that it even imports diacritics from other languages! Still, vicuna is also correct in English: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/vicuna

But I guess importing letters from different alphabets is the limit.

EDIT: Actually ñ is a letter in the Spanish alphabet, so in this case, English has imported a foreign letter.

mc322• 8 years ago

Note, if following old Spanish orthography one could simply spell vicuna with a double “n” as in “vicunna” and remain accurate. The thing above the n in the Spanish spelling of vicuna is actually a miniature “n”. So it’s a sort of stacked n digraph.

ergothus• 8 years ago

Many comments celebrate this "good news". I hate to be the downer, and I dont want to say this article made me sad, but this is more "stopping some bad news". That's still good, and it's better than more bad news, but true good news is when we improve upon the norm, not when we stop one aspect of making things worse.

It is great when we can do things like cure diseases and genetic defects and reduce suffering, but I cant celebrate the same way when we are reducing suffering we created through sheer stupidity.

Humans cause a lot of suffering by accident, or by dint of competing with other species, and that sucks but isnt what I'm talking about. Cases where we know better and do the harmful stuff anyway are the ones that really get me. Stopping that is "good news" the way someone no longer punching me is good news.

[Edit: "computing" -> "competing"

calewis• 8 years ago

Wtf is that design, looks horrendous on a high res display. The BBC really has lost it's way with digital design.

angarg122• 8 years ago

I have a Vicuna scarf and I have to say it's a luxury item I was very happy to purchase.

The scarf itself looks and feels amazing. But best of all, every item made of vicuna wool is numbered and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity, that grants that the wool has been gathered in a respectful and sustainable manner.

Some may feel sad that conservation is promoted this way, but considering how the production of some luxury goods has a devastating impact on the environment, this seems like a better approach.

By the way, if Vicuna is too expensive for you, but still want a sustainable luxury item, look for Guanaco wool items.

aarongolliver• 8 years ago

Any chance you got it off an online store / a brand with an online presence? My roommates and I have been looking for one we can trust.

miahi• 8 years ago

Vicuna (except from Argentina) is still CITES Annex II, which means that the export and re-export of the animal or any derivative must have a CITES certificate[1]. The Argentina vicuna is marked as Annex I (commercial export prohibited).

If the CITES DB is updated (no idea, sorry - and there's no data for 2018), in 2017 very few such trades were actually recorded[2].

I visited Peru a few years ago and there the vicuna products (retail) were accompanied by a certificate needed to get the products through customs.

[1] https://cites.org/eng/app/index.php

[2] https://trade.cites.org/en/cites_trade/download/view_results...

angarg122• 8 years ago

I got it from this online shop:

https://www.alpacacollections.com/100-vicuna-scarf-10549.htm...

I had to pay a (hefty) custom tax to import it, but I didn't had any other problem bringing it into the EU.

The once-endangered vicuña is thriving in the Peruvian Andes

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