Subject: Saviour of the vicuna dies
From: richardh@hpopd.pwd.hp.com (Richard Hancock)
Date: 1991-02-28, 07:04
Newsgroups: alt.tv.twin-peaks

Obituary : Felipe Benavides

Felipe Benavides, who
has died at the age of 73,
was one of South Amer-
ica's most energetic
ecologists and wildlife cam-
paigners. A holder of the J Paul
Getty Conservation Prize, he
achieved international promi-
nence in the conservationist
world for his successful efforts
in his native Peru to save from
extinction the vicuna, the
smallest of the Andean came-
loids whose fine wool was once
reserved for the use of the rul-
ing Incas.

...

But Benavides' most impor-
tant work was in defence of the
vicuna. This wild cameloid,
whose woven fibre can fetch up
to US$2,5000 a square metre on
the black market, was in dan-
ger of extinction because of
poaching. Benavides was cen-
trally involved in a successful
programme to set up vicuna
reserves in Peru's Southern
Andes. His greatest pride was
to show visitors to the Lima zoo
several vicuna he kept in a field
behind his office, and whose
woll he regularly sheared. It
was a demonstration of his ar-
gument that vicuna could be
harvested as an economic prop-
osition without being killed.

Felipe Benavides born August
7,1917; died February 21 1991.

[The Guardian, Feb 27 1991.]